oxfordcommaforever:

If you haven’t heard, because you live under a rock (or in a flyover state), the Supreme Court this morning upheld the portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act commonly known as the “Individual Mandate.”

Despite rhetoric from Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, crowing from crazy people like Michelle Bachmann who said Thursday “We lost religious liberty…We lost economic liberty…We lost our individual liberty to set our course in this country”, and despite two long years of huffing and puffing from the Tea Party, the Supreme Court today, with a surprise swing vote from Chief Justice John Roberts, did the right thing.

Despite not fitting into the oh-so-perfect mold set fourth by our founders (who were brilliant even though they forgot about women’s rights, universal suffrage, and slavery), this law is neccisary and proper. We require people to have car insurance because it benefits everyone involved if you ever have an accident, so why shouldn’t we require people to have health insurance? When uninsured people go to the emergency room, and then either can’t, or don’t pay, who do you think picks up the tab- Is it the hospital,is it waived off and forgotten about? No, the answer is you, the taxpayer- you already pick up the tab for uninsured people who can’t pay.

On top of doing things like preventing Health Insurance companies from denying healthcare to newborns, the PPACA allows young people to remain on their parents insurance until they’re 26, and eliminates “lifetime caps”- without which, your provider could tell you, essentially, that you’ve been sick too many times under the terms of your coverage and that they won’t pay for anymore care.

Oh, and that “tax” you’ve heard about from so many talking heads, costs about $695 dollars MAXIMUM, per person, per year. So please, let’s stop crying tyranny, and realize that everyone in America having access to healthcare is a good thing.

And if you don’t believe me, just ask a Belgian, French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, Australian, Brazilian, Saudi, Polish, Dane, Canadian, Argentinian, Japanese, or Cuban person how they like the fact that they don’t have to worry about getting sick.

Solid post, Ox.