Excellent Selfa op/ed on Health Reform

The point Selfa makes well is that the issue of mandates has been lost in all of the furor over health reform. Socialist Worker has been doing an excellent job of keeping an eye on this feature of the 'reform' proposals, but it has been virtually left out of much of the mainstream debate over the issue.

For example:

"However flippantly, he at least made clear what has been obscured in the health care debate so far--that "universal health care" is a euphemism for forcing people, under penalty of law, to buy health insurance.

In all the tumult over "death panels," the "public option" and Medicare funding, hardly anyone has even commented on whether requiring people to buy health insurance is fair or feasible. Even the "don't tread on me" tea-party types--always ready to object to the oppressive hand of government--have hardly raised an objection to this. Why?

In the main, the prospect of a new, 40 million-strong, government-created "market" for its defective product has kept the insurance industry--though it has nevertheless helped to fund some of the opposition to health reform--on board with the administration's overall approach.

The industry is willing to furnish propaganda against the "socialism" of allowing the uninsured to have the choice of buying insurance from a publicly funded vendor--the so-called "public option. But it has no problem with the government forcing people to buy its product, no matter how expensive or insufficient it is."