It figures that not a week after I publish my magnum opus on why the healthcare market needs to be more free that the American Medical Association would stick their fingers in the statism pot and demand that people carry a certain type of health insurance (Microsoft Word).

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or break some skulls when I read the language used in the resolution: Personal responsibility through forced participation. It sounds like an oxymoron. And more than a little like Kos’s retarded pronouncement that he’s a Libertarian Democrat, who of course shows his support for greater freedom by way of increased legislation, regulation, and redistribution. It’s a funny thing about these people that whenever they want to enslave us to the state (or in the AMA’s case, to corporations and themselves), they clothe it in the language of liberty.

It’s particularly ridiculous in the AMA’s case given what they’ve recently called for in just the past week or two: sin taxes, as well as restrictions on advertising and use of common areas, not to mention several propaganda efforts aimed at curtailing behaviors they disapprove of.

It’s a 12 page document composed almost entirely of filth. The remainder consists of outright lies and words twisted so far out of shape that they’ll be in physical therapy for years. The gist of it is that if you make five times the poverty level, you should be forced to purchase not only catastrophic health insurance, but also preventive health insurance (checkups, flu shots, etc). If you don’t, what else? Tax penalties. More money for the state, more money for AMA pet programs. Almost none of which you yourself will see.

Now, as I mentioned previously, I’m actually a big fan of catastrophic/critical care health insurance. As far as I’m concerned the only people it doesn’t make sense for are those with younger-than-school-age children, the infirm, and the elderly. But part of a free market is choice. Just as freedom of religion includes the choice to be free of religion, freedom of choice in the marketplace includes the freedom not to consume goods of a given type. At any rate, the AMA not only wants to make that mandatory, they also want to make conventional health insurance mandatory. And conventional insurance is just a bad deal all around for many people. In the past year I’ve had physical therapy bills, two primary care visits, a specialist consult, and 3 prescriptions (don’t take em, just have em around). A good deal more expense than most. And out of pocket expenses would’ve been half the cost of my conventional insurance for the year. So not only does the AMA want to eliminate choice, they also want to force you to make an economically unsound purchase.

Sure, car insurance is mandatory even though many never or rarely use theirs (haven’t used mine yet, knock on wood), and ideologically while I feel it shouldn’t be, there’s no denying that that particular mandate at least makes sense on some level. In the almost 7 years I’ve been of driving age (1 of which was spent in a foreign country, and three of which were spent without a car), I’ve been hit 5 times. I wouldn’t have relished the prospect of going to small claims court five separate times and dealing with the headache of collection 5 separate times. I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed paying the ER, MRI, and surgical consult bills that came after the first one. If you don’t have car insurance, you can screw up other people’s lives. Which is why while liability insurance is mandatory, but comprehensive isn’t. If you ball up your own car and can’t afford to replace it, tough. You chose not to pony up the extra cash.

If, on the other hand, you don’t have health insurance, the only life you can screw up is your own. Meaning, generally, being up to your eyeballs in debt (a debt that would be considerably lower if the healthcare market were more free). Someone will have to explain to me exactly why the government can tell me what I can do to myself. After reading the eloquent words of Paine and Jefferson, the fiery words of Freneau and Henry, I can fairly confidently say that the founding fathers would not have approved.

But the worst part of the whole thing was their use of the word responsibility. Especially paired with “individual” and “personal.” Now, if you haven’t figured out yet, I’ve got a little bit of a libertian streak. Meaning that “personal responsibility” is more or less my mantra. And the whole reason us minarchists worship at that altar is because those two simple words characterize not only how we view ourselves, but how we judge others. Personal responsibility is about choice. It’s about having the ability to waste your money on useless frippery, or invest it in education. It’s about clawing your way out of a ditch instead of waiting for some guy with a ladder to come strolling by. It’s about doing everything in your power not to fall in to the ditch in the first place.

But let’s see how the AMA uses it:

In considering an individual requirement for health insurance, the Council believes that at some point incomes rise to a threshold where personal responsibility should be required. . . .

Personal Responsibility should be required? As I’ve already said, the entire point of personal responsibility is that you do it yourself. If you’re forced to do it by laws and penalties imposed by the state, it’s simple obedience. My dog is obedient. She pees outside, doesn’t pull food off the table, and stays off the couch. Because I trained her that way.

Maybe I’m missing something though. Responsibility means obligation or duty. Personal means of or pertaining to the self. Well, that gets personal responsibility coming and going. Responsibility to the self, responsibility from the self. Either way if an external force (i.e. government) is the one enforcing the obligation or duty, it’s not personal. Nope, my logic is solid.

Kos and the AMA both know how to talk a good game. They know how to lie through their teeth claiming to defend liberty, personal responsibility, and the American way while doing nothing of the sort. A word out of context is just a word. And personal responsibility as the AMA would have you think means being told what to do and being punished for not doing it.

Hat tip: Cato