Health reform bill steals from the young to cover sick care costs of the elderly

Thursday, February 25, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: health care bill, costs, health news

(NaturalNews) Buzz about the health care reform bill never seems to end as talking heads from across the political spectrum duel it out over how best to control people through health care. What the population at large may not be aware of is that, if it passes in its current form, it will require young people between the ages of 18 and 35, many of whom are uninsured, to purchase government coverage.

Setting aside the fact that such a proposal is blatantly unconstitutional, the day may come when 18 million uninsured young people who are already strapped for cash will be required to purchase insurance from the federal government. Anyone who fails to comply can be penalized with yearly fines as high as $2,250 in the Senate version, depending on a one's income. Under the House bill provisions, a person can be fined at 2.5 percent of his income.

The purpose of requiring young people to purchase insurance is to keep the premiums low for everyone else. In essence, the bill would require young, healthy people to subsidize older, unhealthy people by paying for a service they likely will not use very often, if ever.

The epitome of dictatorial socialism, government-run healthcare penalizes the healthy at the expense of the unhealthy. All incentives to improve health are demolished within a system that essentially rewards unhealthy people with care provided by the hard-earned money of healthy people.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained that no matter what, younger people are going to bear the brunt of any sort of reform that gives the federal government control over health care. He emphasized that there are ways around the mandate, including not having to purchase any insurance until the moment it is actually needed.

Jim Capretta from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on the other hand, defended insurance mandates and their corresponding fines, insisting that when all is said and done it is still less expensive than having to purchase traditional insurance. Because typical individual premiums can be upwards of thousands of dollars, he believes that a fine of several hundred dollars is still a great deal.

But a few questions remain. What provision in the Constitution gives the right to the federal government to mandate health insurance coverage? Where in the Constitution is the government given permission to run health care? These are some of the questions that should be getting asked concerning health care reform.

Sources for this story include: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/05/h...