The Federalization of Health Insurance is Dangerous to Liberty

The United States House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill to federalize health insurance and require all American residents to purchase health insurance or face a fine and larger employers to provide health insurance benefits. The massive new welfare entitlement would provide health insurance for most, but far from all, of those who currently do not have health insurance, including illegal immigrants, even though many of those who are uninsured neither need nor want it and most people who have private health insurance are satisfied with their coverage.

The bill would do so by creating an optional federal government-run health insurance program and by subsidizing private plans Americans will be forced to purchase, often at a higher premium than they are currently paying. In other words, the redistributionist bill would essentially take money from one group of Americans and give it to another. Redistribution of income denies the liberty of the pursuit of happiness because it denies the fruits of one’s labor. Because it would take money from those who earn it and gives it to those who do not, it would subsidize unemployment. Subsidizing something only encourages it, as those who are lazy will have even less incentive to work.

The federalization of health insurance would therefore represent a takeover by the federal government of a large sector of the economy, which would lead to higher taxes and deficits and more bureaucracy. The only way the federal government would be able to reduce costs is to ration care, as happens in other states with socialized healthcare, which means that healthcare for seniors, for example, would be reduced, and there would be waiting lists for many procedures. As a welfare program, it would make people even more dependent on government, and thereby less free. Indeed, the federalization of health insurance would reduce the liberty of all Americans because the federal government would be empowered to regulate more and more areas of the lives of Americans that might possibly affect the costs of health care. Thus, the “pro-choice” liberals who propose this bill, led by President Barak Obama and Congressional Democrats, would reduce choices about both health insurance and health care for all Americans.

Health insurance, however, is not a federal issue. There is nothing inherently federal about it. Government exists to protect the rights of the people. The federalization of health insurance would distract the federal government, which is primarily responsible for protecting Americans from foreign threats, from fulfilling its purpose. The federal government, which was already large and inefficient, has been taking over more and more sectors of the private economy. There is no effort whatsoever by the proponents of federalized health insurance to explain what is federal about health insurance in order to justify federalizing it. These liberals cannot even find in the constitution where they get the authority to require purchase of something as a condition of residence in the United States, which would be unprecedented. Indeed, they dismiss the question of constitutional authority as irrelevant or stretch its meaning to such a degree as to render it irrelevant. For example, they use the constitutional clause granting the power to the federal government to regulate interstate commerce to mandate how employers compensate their employees, even if they only engage in intrastate commerce.

The federalization of health insurance is the latest example of how the federal government recognizes no limit in its authority at all, at the expense of the rights of the states and the people. The liberals who support the federalization of health insurance do not believe in the principle of federalism established by the Framers of the Constitution which limits the powers of the federal government only to federal matters. They have effectively repealed that document by ignoring it. And there are few conservative voices who even cry out against this centralization of power that violates the constitutional principal of checks and balances by proclaiming such liberal schemes as inappropriate matters for the federal government with which to interfere, let alone control.

The Senate is considering a bill similar to the one that passed the House to federalize health insurance. If the Senate bill passes that body in a different form from the one passed by the House, a conference committee will work out the differences and submit the compromise bill for the final approval of both bodies to send to the President for his signature into law. Conservatives must act to stop this bill that is dangerous to liberty from ever becoming law.