The Affordable Care Act and the Slippery Slope

We can't lower the drinking age to 18 even if we think that's sensible because, if we do, then we'll have to lower the drinking age to 10. And we can't possibly do that! As every successful law school student quickly learns, the answer to a slippery slope argument is that, no, logic does not always demand that we slip all the way down the slope. Actually, we can draw a line here or there and then try to defend that line as reasonable or necessary. Slippery slope arguments are not irrebuttable, and if you think they are, you will lose a lot of arguments.

But as law professor Geoffrey Stone explains in this insightful article, in analogizing the Affordable Care Act's individual insurance mandate to the forced purchase of, say, broccoli, some Supreme Court justices seem to think they're on a slope so slippery that there's no way to stop.

Comments

[Cindy Walsh]

I think that the real question with the individual mandate comes with the intentions of the mandate. It is given that the mandate is needed to bring a pool of 'well' individuals into the market to subsidize the costs to insurance companies of insuring pre-existing and other 'less-well' individuals. There have been references to this reform as expanding insurance to tens of millions currently unemployed. This is where the argument for this mandate and reform weaken. The healthcare systems being developed across the nation in response to this 'heathcare reform', whether public or private, have set into play the real intention of this piece of legislation.....consolidation of the healthcare industry into a mega-institution mirroring the mega-banks...global entities. That is what healthcare reform is about.

If you look at Massachusetts universal healthcare after a decade, you'll see that the state has gotten near complete adherence to the mandate....everyone insured.....but you'll see that those low and middle class families that would have opted out because they couldn't afford it, are now paying the insurance premium, but losing vital spending for food, gas, childcare while never accessing healthcare because they cannot pay the co-pays. The subsidies offered are not enough to change this dynamic. Insurance company profits are growing as enrollment expands and access falls. This is about what healthcare reform was based....market/profit maximizing. Medical bankruptcy laws and medical malpractice laws are being modified to account for the cursory care that comes with inability to afford access to quality healthcare. The mandate is a Republican proposal deacdes in the making that is meant to take the burden of non-paying patients off private health institutions and taxpayers by eliminating access to healthcare by those not able to afford it.