Maybe people who work for Christian Science groups, for example, which do not believe in any medical intervention, should be exempt from providing coverage at all. After all, they don’t believe in conventional therapies and, therefore, can claim they shouldn't be subject to insuring their employees. Maybe my particular group doesn’t believe cholesterol levels mean anything, so it shouldn't have to pay for cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Ramieri concluded: "I hope the reality, that our social construct often dictates measures we may not like as individuals, will be realized."
I left these comments:
People who want to force their judgment and values on others always rely on collectivist rationalizations to "justify" their force, and Joseph Ramieri is no exception.
Ramieri claims that religious beliefs do not justify allowing religious employers to be exempt from government-mandated contraception coverage for their employees. Otherwise, he says, other employers may not want to cover cholesterol-lowering drugs, or not offer any medical coverage at all.
Well, in all cases, it is their right to do so. It is also the right of individuals to buy, or not buy, whatever coverage that they believe fits their needs, budgets, and beliefs—from whatever offerings insurers choose to market. The contraception mandate is immoral not just for the religious, but for all people. This principle applies not just to the contraception mandate, but to all health insurance mandates. What right does anyone have to dictate what coverage others, employer or individual, must purchase?
Ramieri claims "our social construct" dictates such matters as health insurance coverage, apparently believing that HE represents the social construct, but people who disagree with him do NOT.
There is no "social construct," apart from the individuals that make it up. Only the individual exists. Only the individual can think, value, judge, make choices. To say the social construct dictates is to say some people have the right to force their values on others. When you say "social construct", you mean government. When you say "dictate", you mean dictatorship. That, in fact, is the basic nature of the Affordable Care Act, as Ramieri clearly demonstrates. Dictatorship is the basic nature of all laws that impose insurance mandates, whether at the federal or state level.
In any valid sense that a social construct exists, all individuals are equal members. America's "social construct" is based on individual rights and equality before the law. The only health insurance system that is consistent with Americanism is a free market, where compulsion is banished, and the government protects—equally and at all times—the rights of all individuals and insurers to contract voluntarily to mutual advantage.
Ramieri's "Pandora's Box" refers to liberty, or the right of each individual to act on his own rational judgment: precisely the one that statists of all kinds strive to keep boxed up. That is the whole point of tyranny: The essence of dictatorship is to forbid individual liberty. The real Pandora's Box is the one that allows government officials to dictate to We the People how we live our lives. We began opening that one long ago, which is why we have ObamaCare and the whole, massive, rights-violating regulatory welfare state.
Related Reading:
Collectivism vs. Individualism in Letters
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