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I actually love one of the stated goals of Obamacare, which is to get more money into the system so that sick people don't go bankrupt because of health issues they did not cause.
If someone is born sick, or gets sick through no fault of their own, I don't see why they should be expected to pay one more cent for their healthcare than a normally healthy person, for this reason...they had no control over getting sick, they didn't "choose" to get sick, so why should they be punished? As a healthy person, if I have to pay more than my own fair share to help a kid with lukemia, I have no quarrel with that. As an aside, I think that if someone is unhealthy because they smoke, or because they sleep around, or because they choose to eat crappy food and not exercise, than every single cent o fthe cost of their care should be born by them. If someone chooses to smoke and gets emphezema, why should I have to sacrifice to pay for their care?
And it makes sense to me that the individual mandate levels the playing field. Healthy people are healthy because of pure luck. They don't deserve to prosper because of that luck, just as someone who unfortunately gets sick doesn't deserve to suffer financially.
So if the individual mandate is used to "level the playing field" so to speak, I think it passes my ethical litmus test. I'm just not sure about the constitutionality.
If Obama wins re-election (and I suspect it will come down to Ohio, where he seems to be polling well), Obamacare will stay. If Romney wins and the GOP controls Congress, the first thing Romney will do is repeal it.
How does this shake out politically? People who don't like Obamacare (from what I've seen, every poll suggests that most folks don't like Obamacare) will be more fired up about getting Romney in there. But Obama avoids looking like an idiot, which is what he would have looked like if the one thing he did when his party could do whatever they wanted, got deemed illegal.
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