One Question We All Need to Understand Before We Debate Health Care

Why is requiring us to purchase health insurance not the same as requiring is to buy (or worse, eat) broccoli?  In short, when we choose not to buy broccoli we are choosing not to enter the broccoli market.  When we choose not to buy health insurance, get sick and end up in an emergency room, we are choosing to free ride…because we are in the market but choosing not to pay for the goods we are consuming…and insisting everyone else pay for our consumption instead. 

This increases the costs to others (higher premiums, higher taxes, higher risk of disease spreading in public spaces, costs associated with lost days at work or unavailable hospital beds or doctor shortages).  Thus, we might still oppose the Affordable Care Act, but if we do we must do so after first understanding this central distinction to avoid deciding based on sound bites (about nasty old broccoli) designed to mislead us.

Harvard Law professor, Noah Feldman, provides a longer explanation to the central question for the Supreme Court—and for all of us—in evaluating the Affordable Care Act.