Regarding healthcare, I want David Price and the White House to consider the following issues:

Dear Mr. President,

You said in your speech to Congress on this Wednesday evening (09/09/09) that a person shows “irresponsible behavior” by choosing not to buy health insurance.

I respectfully disagree. Particularly, I noted flawed logic in certain of your analogies. For instance, equating a required auto insurance premium to proposed mandatory health insurance premiums, ignores clear differences. Any person can refuse to own a car (or can surrender a car tag for a non-driven car). Not so, with being a human. What human can choose not to exist (unless–unthinkably–ending one’s own life should be the bottom-line only remaining alternative)?

Indeed, affordable health insurance would seem a dream come true. Still, I have almost always had to pay in-full for my doctor/hospital-emergency-room visits–regardless of whether or not I carried health insurance. I have, thus, never viewed my behavior as irresponsible–merely pragmatic (and thankful), based on availability of payment plans.

In short, a forced health-care premium would charge a human to breathe, to have a pulse, in the land of the free, in the United States of America.

Though I would eschew “the perfect being the enemy of the good,” I just cringe at the notion of loss of fundamental choice. My body is not a car. Will health insurance be re-named “vital-signs taxation”? Since no insurance plan can assure a man of life, why force a citizen to pay any health insurance company (or even to pay the U.S. Government option) just for being alive inside–or outside–the USA?

While I applaud your over-all approach to reforming health-insurance/care, this one aspect, of your plan for reforming health-care, troubles me. This evening’s speech explained, that projected revenue/gains from requiring health-insurance coverage, will off-set risks for insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. Somehow, I am not convinced that the two issues need be linked–except to make macro economic numbers work, in the abstract aggregate.

Yet my micro budget makes me choose to turn off my thermostat (or set it at 79 degrees F. for air in summer, 64 degrees F. for heat in winter). I choose not to pay for $95 chemical-styled cosmetology appointments (I do my own natural hair). Additionally, I use energy-saver bulbs and/or use natural sunlight, to cut electric costs. I walked everywhere, and avoided the subway while a student–to stretch my pennies. I once survived on $20 pocket-cash per month in college, since tuition and board were paid by school loans/grants. Hence, I always declined my roommate’s offers to spend $10 to go off-campus for dinner downtown.

Thus, the notion of paying a required new expense alarms me.

As you know, both U.S. citizens as well as legal U.S. residents already face world-wide income taxation. Would mandatory health insurance premiums also apply to U.S. citizens world-wide?? The 14th Amendment made persons born in the U.S. automatically citizens. This was supposed to answer the discriminatory 1859, Dred Scott case, which excluded Negros from U.S. citizenship. Shall a new form of involuntary servitude (via mandatory “heartbeat premiums”–as required health insurance premiums) now strain the intent of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship by U.S. birth?

It sure seems that mandatory health insurance premiums would indeed be involuntary servitude.

By the way, I do want to purchase affordable health insurance. I truly support the public option choice (or a comparable choice that keeps insurance companies accountable).

Still, America has much yet to overcome throughout this health-care debate. Like the option to marry (which I have not yet chosen), I want to c-h-o-o-s-e to pay a health insurance premium. I do not wish to be forced to pay a health insurance premium just because I am alive (& preferably in good health, with God’s continued grace).

By the way, I would not mind being forced to pay a Federal &/or state penalty/fine (after-the-fact) for using any health-care service (i.e. the emergency room)without paying for fees I incurred for my health care. Your bill could consider making such a fine/penalty, a little more costly than what a person would have paid for a multiple-month (on average), affordable health insurance premium. This way, a person can weigh the cost/benefit of choosing not to carry health insurance. Also, these fines could help deter/off-set some of the “irresponsible,” unpaid health-care charges, while neither stigmatizing nor penalizing those who do pay out-of-pocket for their own total health care costs.

Moreover, in fact, I believe that certain religions may teach against paying for surety to cover future obligations/debts. Actually, entire regional bond markets exist, which avoid this kind of “gambling” on future losses and gains. Health insurance premiums may fall into this “surety for debts” category, pitting religion purists at odds with U.S. legislation.

Further, to require a health-care premium would seem (to me) to interfere with my personal 1st Amendment freedom of speech. Were this true, then your entire health-care bill could risk failing constitutional muster under judicial review, when challenged by someone else brazen enough to raise this issue. For example, a person may wish to protest silently, against a heretofore admittedly self-serving health insurance industry. Any person may want to protest, by refusing to pay any money to the health insurance industry.

In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau (of non-cooperative civil-disobedience), a self-styled “conscientious objector” may protest. This protester may want no dealings with an industry that once abandoned an acne-prone woman so as to refuse her coverage amidst her bout with deadly breast cancer.

Mr. President, let us prayerfully search for a better way to off-set coverage of pre-existing conditions. Do not coerce the U.S. population to pay for health insurance premiums. Please turn away from attempts to tether a “heart-beat tax” to any American’s life.

With kindest regards,
Anonymous