I am completely disheartened that the Legislature of Vermont has repeated the mistake of the Affordable Care Act by penalizing those of us who choose not to buy private health care insurance. It was right to repeal the ACA mandate because it required private citizens to purchase private insurance through the force of a government penalty.
The insurance companies’ goals are to make a profit — not to provide affordable health care.
The mandate argument is that we need more people in the pool to bring down costs. We must join the civilized world with single payer health care provided by the government by taxes collected on everyone making the “pool” the entire population. Then, as a nation of one unified customer, we can deal with the ridiculous costs imposed upon us. We must cut out the middle man, which is private insurance whose survival is guaranteed by this awful law.
The government has no moral authority to require our participation in health care insurance. Our government requires each citizen to be schooled until the age of 16. We can be schooled at home or in for-profit private schools, but it is the government, itself, that is mandated to provide us with a free public education. Government requires an educated public and that requirement forces the government to provide a free education.
If the government mandates that we have health care insurance, it must be in the business of providing health care through taxation. We need capitalism or socialism in medicine. Sometimes you cannot compromise. Would you ask Rosa Parks to sit on the middle of the bus? Republicans will win this argument as they truly believe that the government should stray out of health care. Every Democrat I speak to does not believe in this mandate, they just believe it is a step to where they hope to one day be.
Democrats have lost every election except Obama’s re-election having to carry this heavy stone around their collective necks. The old system didn’t work, the ACA doesn’t work, and this mandate from the state won’t work. Have the guts to go all in and only work for single payer health care.
Philip Allen
Rutland Town