Careless Coercion & Healthcare
admin on Sep 26 2009 at 10:06 am | Filed under: Issues, National News
At a July press conference, President Obama claimed that “the average American family is paying thousands of dollars in hidden costs” because uncompensated health care for the uninsured drives up the price of medical coverage. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, by contrast, he said uncompensated care costs the average family $900.
According to a 2008 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, both of those estimates are way off. The foundation’s analysis indicates that the true annual cost per family is more like $200, with uncompensated care accounting for “less than 1 percent of private health insurance costs.”
These numbers are important because the president’s main justification for requiring every American to buy health insurance, a central element of his reform plan, is that uninsured people unfairly impose costs on their fellow citizens. That rationale not only has a weak empirical basis, but it also conceals the real motivation for the individual insurance mandate, while dodging moral and constitutional questions about it.
To read the rest of the commentary by Jacob Sullum, senior editor of Reason magazine.