Actually Hoping The Supreme Court Rules The Individual Mandate Unconstitutional

As long as we live in a world where a disproportionately-small number of people require a disproportionately-large amount of health care, the ways that we pay for that health care will be hotly-debated.

I wish we had never done Obama's experiment with private insurance, and had gone whole-hog with Single Payer. It's not that I think the Individual Mandate is really unconstitutional: we have far more draconian mandates in our society (paying income taxes; DUI laws; the draft) that people don't complain about much from the viewpoint of constitutionality. I think it's questionable to require people to purchase insurance, in general, but we do that with auto insurance all the time. Questionable, or not, it makes sense, and protects society, when so much money is at stake. People adjust.

No, by retaining private insurance companies, yet depriving the government the ability to set rates through hard bargaining, we preserve the inefficiency and corrupt essence of the current system. It is best to cut the private insurance companies completely out of the process, make health care delivery efficient, and bring our society into the 21st Century. The individual mandate is the "most Republican" part of the new system - it gives private business a huge, unearned cut, and is the essence of Romneycare - and unfortunately it's the way that complete coverage is enforced in Obamacare.

I caught a brief news story on TV regarding Taiwan's experience. Their health care system was widely viewed as a fiasco: in the mid-90's, 41% of the population had no health care insurance coverage at all. They looked at a number of systems as possible models (rejecting the U.S. as a model of how NOT to do things) and settled on Single Payer. Within a year, all but 8% of the population was covered, and with the government in the position of being able to drive hard bargains with private contractors, health care is far less expensive than it used to be. In a word, success!

We should follow Taiwan's example. As long as we try to preserve exactly those things about the current system that should be eliminated, we will suffer.

So, if the Individual Mandate goes buh-bye, I'm OK with it. Whatever it takes to get to Single Payer Nirvana.