decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
on their own will die or suffer? | 355 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
The Big Picture...
Authored by: TemporalBeing on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 12:36 PM EDT
The other side is: can the government tell free loaders not to freeload? Can it decide to solve a free loader problem that it hurting others by taxing the free loaders to encourage them to stop free loading?
Except they aren't really freeloaders. They're people that typically have to pay the whole bill themselves and end up in bankruptcy as a result, in part due to paying inflated bills because of how the insurance companies operate.
And the government does already use taxes to encourage people to fix their houses so that they aren't such energy hogs, etc.
There's a big difference between providing incentives for participating, and taxing for non-participation. For example, home improvements require the home owner to spend money first (participation), then they get a tax credit (incentive) for doing so. Same for energy efficient vehicles - spend first, then get some money back in a tax credit. However, in this case, often the people can't afford it in the first place, so they are not spending money on it. Forcing them to pay higher taxes as a result is not going to resolve the afford-ability issue. They'll just owe the government more, and end up in bankruptcy for earlier and more often (now dragging the IRS courts down too). If Congress wanted to make it about afford-ability and encourage people then they would do it just like all other incentive programs - provide a tax incentive for participating - spend the money on health insurance and you'll get a certain amount back, thus reducing the costs for everyone (temporarily - until health insurance companies raise the rates to adjust for it).

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

on their own will die or suffer?
Authored by: Wol on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 11:33 AM EDT
Or on their own will cause death, suffering, and poverty FOR OTHERS.

In this particular case, it's fairly easy to show that the uninsured cause
injury to other people (my vaccine example, someone else's Emergency Room as
opposed to preventive example, etc etc).

It's fairly clear cut in this case that providing basic insurance for everyone
will reduce the future cost for all the "well behaved" citizens of
today.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )