Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute devotes his latest National Review Online column to the stakes associated with this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the challenged to the federal health care reform law.
Americans respond positively to parts of the law that appear to give them more benefits or that help the disadvantaged, especially when those provisions are presented to them as nearly cost-free. But Americans are also aware of the bill’s many failings: It increases federal spending, taxes, and debt. It adds new burdens to struggling businesses, making it harder for them to grow and hire new workers. It drives up the cost of health insurance, especially for the young and healthy, while putting in place structures that will almost inevitably lead to the rationing of care.
The average American adds up the costs and benefits and decides that, on the whole, they don’t want the law. It’s not bad marketing; it’s bad law.
But there is a much deeper reason why so many Americans reject Obamacare. They see it as an enormous expansion of federal power, contrary to the Constitution, American historical tradition, and their own innate dislike of big government. There is a reason why the individual mandate is the most unpopular aspect of the law.
If the Court upholds the government’s power to force you to buy health insurance, is there any limit to this power? Is there anything the government can’t require you to do? That is why the analogy of a “broccoli mandate,” while pooh-poohed by liberal legal experts, struck such a chord. It’s not that the public expects the broccoli police to appear on their doorstep anytime soon, but they understand that unrestrained and unlimited government power is a thing to be feared.
