3 Reasons to End Obamacare Before It Begins

As the legality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – a.k.a. Obamacare – goes before the highest court in the land, here are three reasons to chuck the whole program even before it gets underway.

1. It Represents the End of Limited Government. The Supreme Court will issue its verdict later this spring of course, but there’s no question that if the government can force you to do something simply because you exist and draw breath,  then the American experiment in limited government is over and done with. Whether it’s the mandating of eating broccoli or buying insurance, a government that can make you do whatever it wants just ain’t in the American grain.

2. Its Price Tag is Already Ballooning. The latest government estimate of cost tells us what we already knew. Health-care reform is going to cost us a lot more than the arm and the leg it’s supposed to save us. The Congressional Budget Office is now saying that the first full decade of Obamacare is going to cost about $1.8 trillion , or double the original estimate used to sell the program.

3. Obamacare Won’t Make Us Healthier. Health insurance isn’t the same thing as health. Most of us might end up paying more for health care under the new law, but there’s precious little evidence that coverage itself leads to lower medical costs. A 1993 study by the RAND Corporation found that “for the average person, there were no substantial benefits from free care .” Not smoking, eating moderately, and not boozing it up provide greater health benefits than any low-deductible, low-co-pay insurance plan.

Produced by Meredith Bragg; written by Nick Gillespie, who also narrates.

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Follow Nick Gillespie on Twitter. With Matt Welch, Gillespie is the author of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America.