FASTER, PLEASE: Obamacare’s Basket Of Insurance Mandates Should Be The First Thing To Go.

Repeal of the mandates in this session, preferably in 2017, is a bottom line. If the mandates are not repealed, it would be a serious betrayal of voters, and grounds for mounting primary challenges to incumbents. DC politicians don’t seem to grasp that the mandates, as originally conceived, are fascistic. Justice John Roberts seemed to understand that in NFIB v. Sebelius when he wrote that the Commerce Clause doesn’t allow Congress to command Americans to buy things. But then he concluded that the command (i.e., mandate) was really an option, and that the penalty was really a tax, thus saving Obamacare (while creating a whole new chapter in American jurisprudential incoherence).

If the mandates are repealed, many young folks will opt to go without health insurance. But that can be a rational decision. A young person wishing to amass funds to buy a house, or start a family or a business might decide that taking the risk of having no health insurance is worth it. Maybe youngsters would decide differently if health insurance weren’t so damned expensive.

And maybe, just maybe, they should be allowed to make that decision for themselves without coercion.