By David
R. Usher
February 14, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
Forty-five
years ago Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned us about what would happen
if Johnson’s Great Society was established. Today, America is
drowning in social expenditures and medical expenses -- most often incurred
for lower-income unmarried individuals, their children, and unmarried
retirees.
Today,
illegitimacy is 72.3 percent for blacks, 52.5 percent for Hispanics
and 28.6 percent for whites. Almost none have health insurance. Many
elderly lower-income unmarried individuals have no access to health
care and could not afford it even if they did.
Most
Republicans object vehemently to Obama Care, but believe that the “individual
mandate” (a requirement that one must buy health care insurance
or face civil or criminal penalty) is viable at the state level.
Trading
a federal-level individual mandate for a state-level one is not a victory.
It would be the greatest expansion of the welfare state in history,
which cost America something in the neighborhood of $1.2 trillion in
2011 (also driving deficit spending at the state level).
Passing
the buck is not an answer. There is nowhere to pass it to. We are faced
with a decision already determined by unaffordability: Marriage vs.
socialized health care.
Fact:
Married couples are three times more likely to be insured than unmarried
couples.[1]
Marriage doubles the chances that a family has access to an employer
health insurance plan, provides two income streams to pay for it, and
in-home care at no cost. Married individuals and their children are
healthier,[2]
happier, live longer, and have lower health care costs.[3],
[4]
But
there is one issue more important than chronic-phase socialism or basic
marriage economics: The individual mandate does not pass constitutional
muster at either state or federal levels.
The
individual mandate is unconstitutional at both the state and federal
levels because it is a tax on being alive. There is no constitutional
foundation permitting any governmental body in the United States to
require citizens to purchase something merely because they are alive.
The
individual mandate is a dangerous precedent abrogating the Declaration
of Independence. It turns the Fifth Amendment on its head, depriving
individuals of due process rights to life, liberty, and property by
making life itself a prosecutable economic and criminal offense. It
is an attempt to license the act of living itself.
“The
mandate unquestionably is a deprivation of liberty and property without
due process, since it purports not to rely on the taxation power but,
as you point out, it punishes people simply for being, unless they submit
to the mandate … one could argue that the mandate creates a ‘status
offense’ … such laws have been struck down on due process/liberty
grounds.”
Comparisons
to automobile insurance fail. Driving an automobile is not a fundamental
right. It is a privilege for which states can require insurance in order
to exercise.
So,
how do we resolve the health care crisis?
Our
past failure to apply Marriage Economics in policy has left America
in cultural and economic ruins. Moynihan accurately predicted that Great
Society economic policy would destroy the culture. It did. The answer?
Retool the economic policy. The culture, budget surpluses, and morals
will reappear.
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Marriage
Economic Policy offered by the Center
for Marriage Policy[5]
has been the missing economic component for decades. The word “economy”
comes from the Greek word, meaning “one who manages the household.”
The inventions of macroeconomics and the corporation since ancient times
does not diminish the structural importance of marriage fundamental
to American economic success.
We
must finish the two (and most important) goals of welfare reform not
addressed in the 1996 legislation: reducing illegitimacy and improving
marriage rates. Our multifaceted policy approach will end
the majority of our deficit spending problem[6]
without bedlam in the Congress, state legislatures, or streets –
without forcing individuals to marry.
Every
marriage provides a “marriage spread” – a double-benefit
converting individuals from liabilities to assets:
•
The majority of health care coverage problems and losses will abate,
and the medical and insurance industries will have far less governmental
interference.
•
Married couples retire on two to three times the assets.[7]
They are more able to afford private insurance, resolving the most serious
actuarial problems of Medicaid.[8],
[9]
•
Marriage will improve payments into the social security system.
•
We will see a significant decrease in home foreclosures and serious
financial sector problems.[10]
•
The disappearing middle class will reappear.
•
Teachers will no longer be blamed for poor test scores because they
are unable
to raise half the class to make it teachable.[11]
More students will succeed in school and mature into the work force
that American corporations are now outsourcing for lack of qualified
candidates.
•
We will see an end to class, poverty, and racial warfare. Nearly
75% of poor mothers will be lifted out of poverty. [12]
The discontented
poor will have the social fabric and economic strength to establish
naturally-sustaining and safe communities.
•
Changes in welfare policy will discourage illegal immigration and diminish
the anchor baby problem.
•
The need for abortion will decline. When marriage is important, abortion
is not something most women are interested in.
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•
Fewer women will be interested in same-sex cohabitational arrangements,
and same-sex marriage will no longer be a powerful feminist issue.
•
We can come close to balancing the federal budget, and states can balance
their budgets without pain or difficult choices.[13]
Read
our deficits: We have one choice left. We must apply Marriage Economic
Policy to restore marriage as the social norm or face long-term slow
growth paired with escalating long-term fiscal and political crises,
and continuing evisceration of Constitutional Law.
David R. Usher is President of
the Center for
Marriage Policy, and a co-founder and past Secretary of the American
Coalition for Fathers and Children.
Allen
Icet is the former State Representative for Missouri’s 84th
District, Chairman of The
Missouri Club for Growth, and Vice President of the Center for Marriage
Policy
Cynthia
Davis is the former State Representative for Missouri’s 19th
District and Executive Director of the Center for Marriage Policy
Most
Republicans object vehemently to Obama Care, but believe that the “individual
mandate” (a requirement that one must buy health care insurance
or face civil or criminal penalty) is viable at the state level.
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