Krugman on Health Care: Pay Up, America

In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman provides a frightenly blunt explanation of the liberal rationale for health-care mandates:

The central question is whether there should be a health insurance “mandate”– a requirement that everyone sign up for health insurance, even if they don’t think they need it. The Edwards and Clinton plans have mandates; the Obama plan has one for children, but not for adults.

Why have a mandate? The whole point of a universal health insurance system is that everyone pays in, even if they’re currently healthy, and in return everyone has insurance coverage if and when they need it.

And it’s not just a matter of principle. As a practical matter, letting people opt out if they don’t feel like buying insurance would make insurance substantially more expensive for everyone else.

So let’s be completely clear: Even if you’re healthy, even if you don’t want or need health insurance — or only want to purchase inexpensive coverage against major financial catastrophes — Krugman and the rest of the liberal health care crowd don’t want to let you.  They want to force you to pay for the health insurance of everyone else.  This isn’t about charity or compassion or any of those liberal warm-n-fuzzies, it’s about taking your money and giving it away.

It doesn’t matter how much it costs you, or that you earned the money in the first place, or whether you’ll get health care benefits from it yourself. It’s about requiring you cough up, like it or not.

What a mindset: You earn, we spend.

And these are the same people trying to sell their programs based on freedom?