The tryanny of RomneyCare

My reply on Facebook to an old schoolmate, who thinks RomneyCare doesn't have a mandate:

Stop with the sophistry already. It's a mandate to have insurance, whether your own or through the state. Tell me how a Massachusetts resident can NOT have insurance and not be penalized? You claim there's no "mandate" yet ignore those who don't want insurance at all.

Look what Romneycare has done, making Boston doctor wait times the longest in the nation. Good job!

How strange, I thought all these years that your church believed in free will. Or don't you remember the history of 160 years ago when you were driven across the continent for not following the laws of men?

There is a special place in hell for Romney. Take care you don't let him drag you down with him.

His reply:

Is it your right, Perry, to demand that I pay for your emergency health care because you don't want insurance?

Please do not insert church into this, by the way. That's sloppy and distasteful, my friend.

PS - You speak of being penalized by choosing not to have health insurance. Do you know who is really penalized? ME. Or the people in your state. Because guess who pays for it when you go to the emergency room without insurance? Yep. Your neighbors. What is freedom-loving and personal responsibility about that?

To which I wrote:

That's a strawman. You're labeling everyone without insurance as the same who go to emergency rooms without paying. I don't demand that you pay for ANYTHING in my life. I will pay for my own health care, thank you very much. By the same token, I don't demand that you pay for anything in my life. THAT, my friend, is the essence of freedom.

You support this MANDATE because of free riders. Perhaps if you stopped paying for them entirely, you wouldn't have to worry about making things "efficient." But the truth is that if you're of low income and could have never afforded health insurance anyway, the Commonwealth will still subsidize your care. So this law did absolutely nothing for the problem of those who'd go to an emergency room and not pay, except to say that it's now ok. What this law DOES do is force healthy people to get insurance, no matter that they would have never gone to emergency rooms without paying.

I'm reminding you of your church's history because so many of your members seem to have forgotten it. (I'm likewise critical of my own denomination.) Or do you not believe in a person's freedom to not buy something he doesn't want?

Every person who claims to believe in Jesus Christ needs to remember one scripture in particular: "Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. or he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God."

In Massachusetts, thou shalt buy health insurance no matter that thou needest it not. Pharaoh has spoken. So it has been written, so it shall be done.

I don't suppose with all his wealth, Romney ever once thought of offering to pay for these destitute people who went to emergency rooms, knowing they couldn't pay.