Obamacare’s Authoritarian Problem: Consumer Choice Trumps Coercion Every Time

photo credit: fibonacci blueYou can’t keep your insurance if you like it under Obamacare, because you’re too ignorant to understand what’s good for you.

That’s the argument we’ve been hearing from a lot of folks on the left — an argument that pivots from “common good” to soft authoritarianism. President Barack Obama is all in, as well, claiming that he was merely guilty of forcing Americans to pick a “Ferrari” health care plan over a “Ford” one. (Is it really “picking” if you’re forced?)

This is necessary because health care is not a product as a toaster is a product. (It took me only a few seconds online to find 613 different types of toasters, ranging in price from more than $300 to $15. They weren’t subsidized, and I even could carry them across state lines. If health care were like toasters, we’d all be in great shape.) And as they do with anything that features negative externalities, technocrats will tinker, nudge and, inevitably, push.

“America doesn’t have a free-market health care system and hasn’t for decades,” Business Insider’s Josh Barro wrote in a piece titled “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Probably Shouldn’t Be Able To Keep It.” “With taxpayer subsidies so embedded in everybody’s plan purchasing decisions, taxpayers have a legitimate interest in ensuring that health plans serve the public interest, not just private interests.”

“Legitimate” is a malleable adjective. Just think of all the other areas of American society that are subsidized by taxpayers. Agriculture, higher education, the auto industry, the banking industry, professional sports, marriage — the possibilities are endless. Why is Washington allowing 20-year-old college students to work on business degrees when we need them to be engineers and factory workers? We subsidize, so why don’t we decide?

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