Destruction Among The Democrats

I was at my internship with Laura Ingraham earlier today, and as part of the job I had to look up information regarding the falling house of cards that is the Democratic Party and its domestic initiatives. Below is what I found:

1. President Obama’s Transportation Security Administration nominee has resigned after Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and other Republicans held up his nomination due to his lying to Congress.

2. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) is calling for health care voting to halt until newly-elected Senator Brown (R-MA) is seated.

3. White House officials and House Democrats see things differently on health care and the ramifications of the Brown election.

4. Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) may very well have Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) as a challenger this year, despite his calling out the left today.

5. White House advisor David Axelrod and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs don’t get it.

Below is what I have found since:

6. Suddenly, deadlines aren’t so important to President Obama.

7. Moderate Scott Brown (R-MA) and conservative Jim DeMint (R-SC) are on the same page, it appears. Kind of makes Democrats look like the ones who are purging their own ranks.

8. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) is kinda-sorta-not-really calling for health care reform to start over.

Update:

9. Representative Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) has been rumored to be prepared to resign from Congress if the health care debate keeps going, and is being courted by a large insurance organization.

10. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is being hammered by the liberal members of her caucus.

None of this is to take away from the fact that Republicans still have work to do in creating a big tent- though Ed Morrissey continues to do great work regarding that goal- and that the Tea Partiers and many other Americans are as angry at the Republican Party as they are at the Democratic Party. While I think the Republicans will win several Senate seats, and 20-30 House seats, I also think the divisions between conservative Republicans and moderate Republicans, and between social conservatives and fiscal/economic conservatives, will hand several House races and at least one or two Senate seats to the Democrats in 2010. Of course, if President Obama keeps using his waning political capital to help Democrats in tough elections, perhaps Republicans will be fortunate enough to have another two years to get their own house in order before the 2012 elections.

Will You Go to Jail If You Don’t Have Insurance?

Jack Balkin says that the answer is no.

Balkin is correct that, technically, anyone who does not buy insurance under the new set of laws will only have to pay a tax (or as I prefer to think of it, a fine).? Only if they refuse to pay the fine will they then, eventually, be sent to jail as a tax evader.? Fair enough.? But the general point still remains.? If you do not comply with this new law – you will be sent to jail.? Being sent to jail for refusing to pay the fine is only morally different if the fine has some particular justification.

Balkin argues that the fine (or as he prefers to think of it, tax) is justified by free-rider problems:

If lots of people (and especially young and mostly healthy people) don’t buy health insurance, the cost of insurance goes up for everyone, and it is passed on to others in the form of higher premiums. In addition, people who don’t buy health insurance tend to wait until their health problems are severe and then use emergency services; they may contract communicable diseases (which they may pass on to others) or they may become disabled. All of these costs get passed along to others–in the form of higher premiums and higher costs for hospitals and insurers–or they have to be absorbed by federal and state governments through programs for the poor or the disabled.

So if you don’t buy health insurance, you are increasing costs for other people. The federal government is taxing you to recoup some of those costs. An analogy would be taxes on alcohol or tobacco, although these taxes are usually worked into the retail price of the goods so that people don’t even have the opportunity to refuse to pay them. Another example would be taxes on an enterprise that is creating additional costs to the environment through pollution; the government taxes you if you don’t purchase and install anti-pollution equipment.

Balkin skips more than a few steps with this analysis.? In significant part, health care free riding is only possible because there are laws that legalize free riding.? For example, the laws requiring hospitals to treat all emergency room visitors, regardless of their capacity/intent to pay, are an invitation for free riding.? The costs of treating any of these patients who do not pay will be passed on to all of the hospital’s paying patients.? If we really wanted to eliminate this free rider problem, we would just make people pay for their emergency room visits – or we would at least not require hospitals to receive people without insurance.

The current health care reform is not a brilliant scheme to end free riding.? In large part, it is an attempt to write more free riding into law.? It requires insurance companies to transfer health care costs from sick to healthy patients.? It enacts massive subsidies that transfer costs from the poor to the wealthy.? These transfers are very much like actual free riding, and they would not occur in an efficient insurance market that had no free riding.

Balkin shrugs and says that “tax policy does this all the time”.? And so it does.? And opponents of these subsidies are right to remind the rest of the electorate that their participation is not voluntary, but enacted through threat of imprisonment.? Health care reform is commonly assumed to be in everyone’s benefit, but this is of course not the case.? The threat of jail time lies behind every government “charity”.