/ˈmændeɪt/ Show Spelled [man-deyt] Show IPA noun, verb,-dat·ed, -dat·ing.
–noun
1.
a command or authorization to act in a particular way on a public issue given by the electorate to its representative: The president had a clear mandate to end the war.
2.
a command from a superior court or official to a lower one.
3.
an authoritative order or command: a royal mandate.
4.
(in the League of Nations) a commission given to a nation to administer the government and affairs of a former Turkish territory or German colony.
5.
a mandated territory or colony.
6.
Roman Catholic Church. an order issued by the pope, esp. one commanding the preferment of a certain person to a benefice.
7.
Roman and Civil Law. a contract by which one engages gratuitously to perform services for another.
8.
(in modern civil law) any contract by which a person undertakes to perform services for another.
9.
Roman Law. an order or decree by the emperor, esp. to governors of provinces.
"Mandate." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 22 Mar. 2010.
There was a rather large event this weekend. One that generated a lot of heat on both sides of the political aisle. That issue was the reformation of health care. Now I am waiting to see what this all means in the long term. It seems that for the majority of those against it this heralds the beginning of "Socialism" in America and the end of our great nation. Those who are in favor of this seem to feel that this is evidence that "change" can happen and that America will finally have the health care system that they should.
I am not here to debate either of those points. Though if my readers want to, please feel free to do so in the comments section. What I would like to talk about is the word "Mandate". As I listened to and read and watched things pertaining to the Health Care debate of the last year. It seemed that one of the biggest objections for those opposed to it was that health insurance would be mandated. Now I live in Oregon and in Oregon car insurance is mandated.
"Oregon's mandatory insurance law ORS 806.010 requires every driver to insure their vehicle. The minimum liability insurance a driver must have is:
Type Amount
Bodily injury and property damage liability
$25,000 per person;
$50,000 per crash for bodily injury to others; and
$20,000 per crash for damage to the property of others
State law also requires every motor vehicle liability policy to provide:
Type Amount
Personal Injury Protection (for reasonable and necessary medical, dental and other expenses one year after a crash)
$15,000 per person
Uninsured Motorist Coverage
$25,000 per person;
$50,000 per crash for bodily injury
You must certify that you have this insurance each time you register a motor vehicle, or when you buy a light vehicle trip permit. You must also certify that you will comply with Oregon's motor vehicle insurance requirements as long as a vehicle is registered in your name, or for the duration of the permit.
Some motor vehicles are exempt from financial responsibility requirements. Those exemptions can be found in ORS 806.020."
Also in Oregon if you drive a motorcycle you must wear a helmet another mandatory law. Now one of the core ways that both of these laws were put into practice was the idea that uninsured motorists and helmetless drivers raise the cost for the rest of us if we mandate these things then the cost will eventually be kept lower. Now I was not around for the debate on those and I am not sure if that has been the case or not. But I wonder if the fight for mandating car insurance was a heated as the fight has been for health care. Now I know that in the case of car insurance the federal government has left it up to each state to decide the laws on car insurance. I believe that car insurance is mandated in each state. So I wonder what makes health insurance different then car insurance in this case. Is it strictly because cars are a machine and there isn't the emotional connect?
I know several states are already moving to file cases against a federal mandate for health insurance. I do not have a problem with that. I think states should have the ability to make their own laws. If New York wants to ban the use of table salt and they vote it through okay. That is how it works. Sometimes things will get voted on that we do not like but ideally then they can be revisited and changed. I did not mean to get sidetracked on that.
My main question is this one. What is the difference between mandating car insurance vs mandating health insurance? Are both equally bad? Would it be okay if each state was doing it on it's own? Is the problem that the Fed has mandated it and that goes against the Constitution? I really want to know what is the difference?
11 comments:
BTW, the ad at the bottom of your page was for car insurance.
I don't drive a car. I feel that my money is better spent elsewhere. So, I choose to give up driving and in doing so, I can afford a mortgage and own my own home.
With this mandate, I cannot choose to live without health insurance.
That is the difference.
Yeh... I noticed that I was beginning to hear about 'Bipartisanship', 'Mandatory' and 'Compel' earlier in the month and on the floor of our State House of Representatives. There they swapped the examples for Mandatory with Compel, but it's used in essentially the same way, so I'll clip that part which I addressed in "A Compelling Debate on Three Steps Down the Slipery Slope",
"Not to grant the validity of the state compelling auto insurance, but when the leftist says,
"What is the issue of compel... I don't understand... doesn't the state force you to have auto insurance?"
, the comparison is lame to the nth degree. First off, yes most States do compel their citizenry to purchase auto-insurance IF they intend to engage in the specific activity of driving an automobile on the public streets, and they compel this because there is at least an argument for the fact that even their competent actions and forethought could result in accidental damage to another's property or person. Whether or not you agree with the argument, there is at least an argument of some substance there.
The Federal Govt Does NOT compel individual citizens of individual states to purchase auto insurance, even though the actions of those individuals could conceivably result in damage, injury or death to other citizens. Even though such a scenario does in fact represent real dangers to others - and the children (sorry, couldn' resist)- the Fed Govt does not involve itself in auto insurance because the Federal Govt has no business whatsoever in involving itself in the individual behaviors and transactions of individual citizens of individual states - IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!
Furthermore, with the issue of auto insurance, there are several other options open to individual citizens, several valid choices they could make and very legitimately and legally go their entire lives without ever purchasing auto insurance, but there are Zero such options regarding healthcare insurance. While the state does require that you have insurance if you are going to drive a car on the streets, you can still purchase and own a car without insuring it - as long you don't park or drive it on the public streets. You can purchase a car for the purpose of fixing it up, such as with a classic show car, and never be required to insure it, since you may never intend to drive it - it's for show only, and would be towed to car shows or sold. You could also own a car and drive it, and never have to insure it, if you only drive it on your own property or on no roads at all, such as is the case with 4-wheeling.
Or of course you could, as many Americans in fact do, simply not drive a car, choosing instead to ride trains, subways, busses, taxis, bikes or just plain walk from here to there on your own two feet. People are not compelled to purchase auto insurance simply because they are breathing, but only if they intend to engage in a very specific activity and in a specific situation, and only because that could conceivably put others at potential risk as a result of your deliberately chosen activities.
Such is NOT the case with healthcontrol insurance..."
And again, federally mandated healthcontrol is plain unconstitutional. The power isn't there, among the governments enumerated powers and it is not enough that lawmakers really want to 'help you' - the power to do so isn't there, and if the ever popular commerce clause wasn't sufficient to mandate people to not drink or supply alcohol with Prohibition (they knew it required a constitutional amendment), neither it nor any other clause is sufficient to mandate that individual citizens of the separate states must buy govt approved healthcontrol under the watchful eye of the IRS. The only difference between they knew then and what we ignore now, is that today our politicians don't care that they don't have the authority to do what they reeealy want to do, they're just attempting to do it anyway.
If the law of the land no longer binds those in power from abusing their power... it isn't going to bind the people in power when the power shifts to the other party, and that will amount to a prohibition of freedom for us all.
Be careful what you mandate for.
Van, thanks for your even handed and calm answer to my question. I am trying to understand the issue and not poke a stick so thank you. I still feel that health insurance is something that should be provided by the little s state. But I also understand your resistance to it.
I think part of my confusion is that I do not know anyone who chooses not to have health insurance. I just know people who wish they had it if they do not. Myself included. I have a job but it does not pay well enough to afford health care.
Lance said "I still feel that health insurance is something that should be provided by the little s state. But I also understand your resistance to it."
No Lance, I don't think you do understand my resistance to it... but I understand what you mean.
Until you accept that reality is what it is, and accept the basics of economics - not Keynesian wish lists and double talk - you won't understand my resistance to it, and you and those who think as you do will continue to pay dearly for it (as will the rest of us because of you).
I'd really would love to give you the magic free healthcare wand... but being as that is fantasy, I can't. Price is not primarily a method of profit (profit is a result of correctly determining price), it is not determined by choice (it is of course estimated by choice, but those estimates are attempts to find the correct and actual best price), Prices are set by the results of the choices made by those involved in the production, supply and demand for that good or service in that market, and in a myriad of other tangentially related markets.
Pricing is a mechanism which helps to enable the best possible 'distribution' of a scarce (meaning non-magic wand created) good or service to those who most need it. The consequences of pricing are a vital tool to ensure that those who need a good or service the most, have the best opportunity to acquire it, without being crowded out of line by those who have a lesser need for it.
Consequences are vitally important to the smooth functioning of any market - with artificially reduced consequences, people do not self regulate their need for that good or service... they all crowd into the line, and you with a heart murmur, are suddenly way behind in a line stuffed with hangnails, runny noses and upset stomachs.
(break)
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Health insurance in general, and govt subsidized health insurance in particular, is in the business of reducing and eliminating the consequences of pricing, and what results from that are the skyrocketing prices of healthcare (there are only a certain number of Dr's & Nurses & offices to see patients in, to service an artificially unleashed and unlimited number of 'needs'), long lines, reduced numbers and varieties of specialists (there's a reason Canada's Premier came here... with the inflated demand for basic med attention, there aren't enough Dr's to be able to specialize), and eventual rationing or even the offering of lotteries for Dr's visits (see Canada).
The mandate for free will do nothing but create mediocre and nearly unattainable service. What you will purchase with your 'free' healthcare, is the destruction of the health care business. Take a look at my last couple posts, this one of how the well intentioned efforts of Democrats and Republicans to 'manage' the price of healthcare over the last 70 yrs, has resulted in the steadily rising costs of healthcare (two good short summaries can also be found here and here).
And by the way, with the IRS seeing that you 'contribute' your healthcare payment... you think you can't afford it now? Wait till the cost of healthcare is taken from you and you have to figure out how to afford the rest of what you need in life, with what you have left after the cost of the 'free' service has been taken from you.
Remember ho low and limited the income tax began as. And whatever the current guesstimates of $2,500 or so to be taken from you annually are now, that's before bills such as this one made yesterday, for a 'public option' have been pushed through.
Whatever swell and generous sentiments you seek 'free' healthcare from, what you will purchase is the destruction of America.
I aim to see that stopped.
Oops, this bill.
Sorry, that's all the calm I can manage for free.
;-)
"Lance said "I still feel that health insurance is something that should be provided by the little s state. But I also understand your resistance to it."
No Lance, I don't think you do understand my resistance to it... but I understand what you mean."
As I typed the above line I realized that resistance was not a strong enough word. Sorry about that. I will follow up your post with a question or a statement that a friend made yesterday.
"I like the analogy with auto insurance, but think its being mandatory is justified on different grounds. Everybody's got to have auto insurance, not because driving is a privilege, but because we all need to be financially accountable for the risks that we take with others' lives and property when we drive. Similarly for lifestyle choices and ... See more the healthcare system. Nobody wants to admit it, but we *already have* socialized medicine: when people get sick they go to the emergency room and *we* (those of us who still have insurance) pay for *their* care, in the form of exploding premiums. If people are using the system, then they ought to be compelled to share in its costs, just like the rest of us."
I realize I am really pushing the limits of your calm. I am not trying to make you mad. I learn something every time we talk about these issues.
I think what I am getting and correct me if I am wrong. Two things the actions of the President and this Congress are unconstitutional and therefor illegal and invalid and the fiscal cost of this plan makes it impossible to achieve and will actually put us (America) into even more of a deficit. Am I understanding the main points?
Lance said "Two things the actions of the President and this Congress are unconstitutional and therefor illegal and invalid and the fiscal cost of this plan makes it impossible to achieve and will actually put us (America) into even more of a deficit. Am I understanding the main points?"
A fair summary, but keep in mind that were the constitution merely a list of thunked up rules, it would be less of a problem. In fact, the 16th & 17th amendments are 'thunked up' rules, they are opposed to the nature, meaning, structure and intent of the Constitution... but if people are intent, and agreed, upon doing something that's been poorly thought out, there is still a proper way which must be followed - hence the amendments to enact, and then repeal, prohibition. Without that, we lose the inestimable value of being a nation of laws, and move more and more towards being one of men, and power being what it is, that has no choice but to quickly resolve into one of tyrannical men out to 'do good'.
The Realities of economics, which is to say consciously 'living in the real world' with an awareness of how it works, will result in a lesser ability for those with actual needs, to be able to satisfy them, as those they rely upon for servicing their needs are over burdened and preventing from doing what they otherwise would.
The forcible interference in pricing, or in causing people to do, or not do, what they otherwise would choose to do, results in the loss of the extraordinarily valuable information which those lost choices otherwise would have conveyed throughout the market (that is the so-called 'Invisible hand'). The result of the propagation of falsehood through the market, is that a chain reaction of decisions are made based upon more, and increasingly more false information - things are ordered that are not in fact needed, things that are needed, are not ordered or even planned for, and the result is - and it shouldn't be in the least surprising - a market that is unable to serve the needs of those within it.
Markets which are planned and ordered from above, and/or even worse, mandated by govt (which deals in the market of favors and favor seeking, not production), are unavoidably markets which will fail. It is the forcible implementation of stupidity upon the lives of the people.
The USSR didn't fail because it's people were inferior, or because the commissar's wanted to ruin the lives of their people - they wanted to help them - but reality doesn't give a damn about your wants - faulty and stupid decisions, result in inefficient and failed results.
Reality is real, you can't fake it into being what you wish it was.
Lance, my calm may get pummeled by the agitation of my fingers pounding the keyboard, but I always do get more out of our disagreements, than I do from many a position more calmly agreed to - I hope you don't mind my bursts too much.
Van Said "I hope you don't mind my bursts too much."
Not at all. I am glad we can both come away from our discussions with something beneficial even if we do not always see eye to eye on them.
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