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I'll have much more to say about Mark Smith's keynote, which was one of the more brilliant speeches I've seen lately, tomorrow. For now, I'll leave you with this quote, on mandates:
There's a reason the bank makes you buy insurance on our -- excuse me, their -- house. Now, you could mandate health care by taking the money out of people's income taxes and giving them a basic plan. But there's a reason for it.Two points on that. First, Obama aside, mandates matter because, sometimes, folks have to be protected from their worst instincts. That's why we force everyone to pay into fire departments through taxes. Otherwise, some folks would opt out under the theory that they don't do much cooking, and we don't want their houses to burn down.Second, single payer, which so many folks love, is a mandate by a different name. That name is taxes. Some people will feel they can't, or shouldn't, pay that level of taxes, and they will be angry, just as some will feel they can't afford insurance, or shouldn't have to buy it, and they will be angry. Now, maybe single payer is a better way to structure the mandate. But it's a mandate nevertheless.
