The score is tied 2-2, but
there’s a lot more game to be played in the matter of healthcare. It will go to
sudden death in the Supreme Court and the general consensus is that the final
score there will be 5-4. No one, though, can be certain which side will win.
Not yet, anyway.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, in
Pensacola, Fla. ruled on Jan. 31 that the individual mandate in the health care
bill—a provision that requires everyone to buy health insurance—is
unconstitutional.

The judge said that because that portion
of the law can’t be severed from the rest of the bill, the entire law must be
voided.

“Never before has Congress required that
everyone buy a product from a private company just for being alive and residing
in the United States,”
Judge Vinson wrote in his 78-page opinion.

He also called the provision dangerous,
because it “would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers.”

A federal judge in Virginia ruled in
December that the bill is unconstitutional. Federal judges in two other
states—one in Pennsylvania—have ruled otherwise.

The question of
constitutionality is the primary legal concern. Article 1, section 8 of the
constitution grants to Congress 18 specific powers known as the “enumerated
powers.” Even though Congress has the power to “regulate interstate commerce,”
that does not mean it can force individuals to engage in such commerce.

There are other concerns with
government-run health care. Not only are there things that the federal
government can’t do legally, there are things it can’t do from a pragmatic
perspective.

Consider the Post Office,
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Amtrak. They’re all broke and run by
the government. Also consider parts of a speech from Judge Andrew Napolitano
who, addressing a crowd in Nevada, said the feds can’t even run a brothel
properly.

“When the federal government
bought the Mustang Ranch, it ran that into the ground,” the judge said. “The
government can’t even provide hookers and booze to truckers in the desert. How
can it possibly run health care?”

Are there flaws with the health
care delivery system in the United States? Of course, there are, but federally
mandated insurance won’t fix the problem, especially when it comes to cost
control.

People are either unaware or are willfully ignorant of the concept of
“TINSTAAFL”—there is no such thing as a free lunch. Insurance, a system where
someone else pays the bill, or even a portion of the bill, in exchange for a
premium, doesn’t bring down the price of the service. It only brings down the
amount the insured pays to the provider. Others are picking up the rest of the
tab.

Because of that, insurance as
we know it keeps the price of health care high. There’s no incentive for health
care providers to lower their own costs and pass those savings on to their
customers, the patients. There’s no incentive for a person to shop for a less
costly solution because somebody else is paying the bill.

Lasik eye surgery is not
covered by insurance, but the price to the consumer of the laser procedure has
dropped over the years.

A free market, restrained only
by laws that punish the initiation of force and fraud, will supply what
customers want and need far better, and with more respect, than any government.