What Exactly is a Mandate?

A GUEST QUERY:

hamster August 27th, 2009 1:20 am
A lot of people on the left and the right complain about the possibility of a "mandate" whereby everybody would have to have insurance. That's not really very important. What's important is how the whole thing is set up. Profit taking and insurance company meddling in health care must be minimized (to the point you could drown them in a bathtub?).

Don't forget, HR676 is a mandate. So is Medicare.

No, HR 676 is NOT a mandate, and nor is Medicare.

A mandate is where a government uses it's power to command a lower level government or even individuals to pay for something or to perform an action. The concept is inherently very regressive and backward due to inherent inefficiency of downward commands where economies of scale are lost, and also because, in most mandates, the government in question is trying to accomplish something it is responsible for by using the resources of others.

Further, the mandating government is almost invariably, at least partly and usually largely, making financial demands irrespective of the true ability to pay of the ones ordered to pay. (Whereas by contrast a progressive tax system rates high by definition with respect to honoring the ability to pay principle.)

In other words, it's a cheap and anti-progressive shortcut move by the Government. It is also an implicit up front admission by the government that it is not economically and/or not politically competent to achieve the objective, even though it is ultimately responsible for the objective. This is obviously a disturbing revelation.

Here is an analogy. A mandate would be like I as a parent telling my 15 year old teenager "I order you to buy a basketball and a backboard/net so that you will spend more time on basketball and less time hanging around low lifes in the neighborhood. If you don't do so, you are grounded for three months." Versus if I buy the basketball and the backboard myself and then deduct some or all of the cost from the allowance. The latter way (me as the "government" buying it and setting it up) is the progressive way and the former way (the mandate) is the right wing or backward way.

Note that with mandates, there is no guarantee that the action wanted ever happens. Rather, the penalty scenario can easily occur.

[The above conversation was in response to this article.]