>“MANDATE” IS A DIRTY WORD
By Ian Linker
I’m about to use a dirty word. It’s the “M” word. Not everyone dislikes the word. In fact, the “M” word is a word the President and others on the Left are quite fond of. So what is the word? Mandate – the antithesis of freedom. Compulsion, force, coercion, and requirement, are all common synonyms of the “M” word. Obama and his allies quite simply love to mandate.
To name a few Obama mandates: Obamacare mandates that all Americans carry health insurance by 2014 or face a stiff penalty. The Dodd-Frank financial industry overhaul, through the controversial Volcker Rule,mandates that by July of this year certain banks cannot buy and sell securities for their own benefit. In the name of energy efficiency, through a special office of the Department of Energy, the Administration mandates what kind of appliances the American people can buy for their homes. Obama has mandated that the cars Americansbuy must achieve 56 mpg, i.e., fully electric powered engines, by 2025. Also in the name of energy efficiency,Obama has mandated that we can only buy a certain type of mercury-filled light bulb.
The reason why the “M” word comes so easy to the President and others on the Left, is that they are starting from a very different point. The Left claim that American principles include fairness, equal opportunity, and equal responsibility for all. Now I have read the Declaration of Independence, and I have read the Constitution,and I have read the Federalist Papers, and I simply cannot find these so-called “principles” in any of these documents. What I found are words like freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and natural-born rights. These are America’s founding principles.
Besides trampling our natural-born freedoms, disregarding the Constitution, and treating the American people like we are too stupid to make decisions for ourselves, mandates like these also have significant negative economic consequences.
Many of these mandates increase the cost of doing business. For instance, the rules and regulations imposed by President Obama alone have increased the cost of doing business in this country by tens of billions of dollars.If business can afford to, they will pass along the increases to their customers as higher prices – like a hiddentax increase. They may also sell fewer goods or services, or they will lay off, or simply not hire more workers. What ever the consequence, mandates like those favored by the Left have significantly negative effects on the U.S. economy.
Now, the Obama Administration is imposing a new mandate: as part of Obamacare regulations the President is mandating most health plans to fully cover contraception without co-payments or deductibles.
The new rule will not affect government-administered, i.e., publicly funded, health care. Those on public assistance already have their birth control fully subsidized. Instead, private health plans will now be required to provide birth control to all their participants, including those who would have already been on birth control with or without the mandate. So, guess what? Those of us who have health insurance will soon be paying higher monthly premiums to subsidize the cost of birth control and a laundry list of other family planning items. After all, the manufacturers of these products are not going to provide them for free. (They cost millionsto manufacture, not to mention the significant research and development costs that go into developing many of these products, and let’s face it, there is nothing wrong with maximizing profits.) And the health insurers who pay for them are not going to just eat the cost. They are going to pass them along to their customers, i.e.,premium-paying Americans – folks like you and me who have health insurance and pay premiums out of our own pockets.
The government’s basis for the new mandate is to reduce the downstream healthcare costs associated with unwanted pregnancies. Putting the moral issues against the mandate, which are significant, aside, the government’s cost-benefit analysis appears to be seriously flawed.
The government, not surprisingly, is overstating the benefit associated with the new mandate. For instance, the number of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. per year covered by the mandate is not as high as the government would have us believe. In fact, although the government claims millions will annually benefit from the mandate, no more than 500,000 unwanted pregnancies would be covered by it. Furthermore, no one is claiming, I’m sure,that the new mandate will motivate the use of birth control in all of these cases or that birth control will preventunintended pregnancies 100% of the time.
And the costs associated with the mandate will likely be higher than the government anticipates. Indeed, those who currently have at least a portion of their birth control covered by their insurance will now have 100% of the cost covered. And some of those not currently on birth control – and not counted as an unwanted pregnancy because they didn’t get pregnant – when offered a free lunch may start using a contraceptive. It will cost insurance companies more to fully cover birth control. These increased costs will simply be passed along ashigher premiums. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Assuming the mandate is even authorized by the Constitution, which I submit it is not, the benefit to society should significantly outweigh the increased costs in order to justify the invasion of our freedom. Once again, it does not.
Mandates are a dirty word not only because they destroy our freedom and keep us under the heavy hand of the nanny state, but they also are invidious because they often impose tax increases on the American people without anyone noticing or batting an eye.
Ian Linker is an attorney living in Ridgewood, New Jersey and is a former Republican candidate for the U.S.Senate from New Jersey.
