If the individual mandate is overturned by itself, the result will be worse than if it is not overturned

LA to Kristor:

A columnist in the Washington Times says that if the Supreme Court severs the individual mandate from Obamacare and only overturns the mandate, the law’s destructiveness will be much greater and the private health insurance industry will be destroyed that much more quickly.

Kristor replies:

His analysis is correct. The only reason the mandate is in the law in the first place is that you can’t run an insurance scheme of any kind where the pool is prevented from measures to control adverse selection—where, i.e., it is forced to accept bad risks and must therefore charge commensurately high premiums, driving away the good risks who can get coverage more cheaply elsewhere. The mandate was needed to avoid destroying health insurance overnight.

Our enemies did not want to do that, because it would have made the cause-effect relation between Obamacare and insurer bankruptcy too evident, which might have provoked a reaction against the law. What they wanted was gradual failure of the insurers, accompanied by all sorts of outrages like premium increases from the “greedy” insurers, which would stoke the fires of public anger against them and justify their eventual immolation by fiat.

I was surprised a moment ago to find myself characterizing our enemies as such. But that’s what they are. The characterization is theirs, for they forthrightly aim at our destruction. To use their own terms, we are their “Other.”

The right is reluctant to admit to itself that the left is inimical, in just the same way that it is reluctant to admit that Islam is inimical; yet neither of these enemies of the West is reluctant to declare itself as such.

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Irv P. writes:

I’d like to add to Kristor’s characterization of the other as our enemy. I have used the phrase “mortal enemy” in several of my comments to VFR. At times, you have chosen to not to post my comment when I’ve said that. I’ve surmised that is because you see it as too extreme or inflammatory.

However, that is what they are, our mortal enemies. They seek our destruction as a civilization and as a race. There will be no compromise with them in the long run. All compromises to date have been made by “our side.” We have been compromising away our existence.

We have so much material wealth, and such abundance in so many ways, we think we dare not make waves that can upset the stability we have come to enjoy.

This is appeasement for short term peace. There will be a battle at some point. It is inevitable. I wish someone could figure out a way to save our way of life, that Francis Schaeffer said was based on what he called “the Christian consensus.” Until we fight to return to that consensus, those of us who see themselves as traditionalists are doomed. We are going to have to get dirty because our mortal enemies are in the mud.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 26, 2012 09:43 AM | Send