Saturday, September 21, 2013

Obamacare Analogy to Homelessness


The purpose of Obamacare is to provide health care coverage to millions of people in the country that don't otherwise have it. Obamacare addresses the problem by forcing everyone to buy health care or face a penalty - and the health care plans that everybody will be on are at a considerably comprehensive level.  In other words, we aren't just talking catastrophic care here, we're talking free contraception and access to all sorts of services.

So I got to thinking about homelessness as an analogy.  Admittedly, it's a smaller problem - the homeless population in this country is only between 600,000 and 700,000 (link).  But you if you count all of the people that aren't homeless, but live in complete squalor, I'm sure this number would be in the millions, too.  Like those who lack health care coverage, those who lack a decent home evoke profound levels of sympathy and numerous charities do God's work everyday to provide what comfort they can.  Maybe you or your church have contributed.

Now imagine if the government addressed homelessness in the same way Obamacare addresses health care.  First, everyone would be forced to buy or rent a home.  Those who couldn't afford to would be subsidized.  Second, everyone's home would mostly be the same and there would be no preference in buyers, but probably a long line.  I don't think people would be very happy about that second part - about living in a place not much different from the less productive or even non-productive members of society around them.

The ironic thing is that I did a quick web search to see what homeless / Obamacare analogies might already have been made out there.  Guess what I found??  None other than Candidate Obama himself in 2008 distinguishing his plan from Hillary's, which had a mandate.  He said that was like solving homelessness by forcing everyone to buy a home.  Link.

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