Paul Krugman’s¹ column of this date provides an insight into the totalitarian mindset. He criticizes Barack Obama because Obama’s health-care plan doesn’t coerce people into purchasing health insurance. Hillary Clinton’s does. Obama’s plan guarantees affordable health insurance to everyone. Clinton’s plan forces people to purchase health insurance (on pain of what? imprisonment?). Consider the following paragraph:

An Obama-type plan would also face the problem of healthy people who decide to take their chances or don’t sign up until they develop medical problems, thereby raising premiums for everyone else. Mr. Obama, contradicting his earlier assertions that affordability is the only bar to coverage, is now talking about penalizing those who delay signing up—but it’s not clear how this would work.

Note the twisted logic. If I choose not to “sign up” for health insurance, I raise premiums for everyone else. Suppose I choose not to purchase home insurance or car insurance. Do I thereby raise premiums for everyone else? Don’t say that the uninsureds who show up at the emergency room will be given free care. That would raise premiums for everyone else. Why does Krugman assume that the care will be free? An obvious solution is to tell people that if they don’t purchase health insurance, they’re on their own, financially. In other words, tell people that they’re responsible for their own health. But there’s the rub. Krugman and his totalitarian ilk don’t want people to be responsible; they want the government to take care of everyone, the way parents take care of their children. Father knows best.

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¹“Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults” (Daniel Okrent, “13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did,” The New York Times, 22 May 2005).