Potato Chips

A first test of the new health care federal law (Obamacare) is headed to the Supreme Court this week.  The focus seems to be the "individual mandate" part of the law.  The argument for this, seems largely to be that the law won't work without it.  That is hardly constitutional justification.  The argument against is much stronger.  If you want to breath in the country, you must buy this product from a private company.  Pretty bold.  A person can live a modern nomadic lifestyle in the barter and cash economy and pay only a small amount of taxes to the various governments in trade for some of the service they provide, but if you want to live, you must buy insurance.
There are a lot of red herrings on both sides of this.  Most (~75%) of us have insurance of some kind already.  The rest get care, although possibly not as good and it isn't free, the rest of us are already paying for it.  Very few people are being harmed by an individual mandate, but that isn't the point.  I'm a little skeptical that the care available to the poor will be much better than their current options.  The Obama administration should have stuck to their guns and gone for the single payer option.  It never would have passed, but at least the argument would have been principle-based.  And, if/when it passes, the inefficient system being put in place would be replaced by a bureaucracy - at least that is an uncomfortable known.  Perhaps a better compromise would have been a single payer minimalist system with employer based coverage above this - sort of like codifying the previous poor arrangement.
Somewhere in here it also only seems right to provide at least some protection from truly frivolous lawsuits. Mistakes will happen and doctors need to be accountable to a different level than mailmen but doctors are human. There might be some malpractice lawyers who are as well.
The largest most bone-headed part of the law is the requirement that kids MUST be allowed on parent's insurance up to the age of 26.  This is horrible.  This is approximately 1/3 of a person's life.  Cut the umbilical chord already.  A person is old enough to vote at age 18, and be put to death by the state.  Old enough to drink themselves into oblivion by 21, but still tied to parents.  When will we see a federal mandate to grow up already.
If you are going to live, you must buy this product from a private company.  And, that company must provide it to your offspring for a third of their life.  Does the single payer system sound worse?

So why is this post called "Potato Chips?"  Food has strong influence on our health.  I'm sitting here eating potato chips while I type this.  This has been a poor food week overall with an offsite training for work on three days.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but the stuffed cookies, blondies and cheese cake at 2:00 in the afternoon was too good to pass up.
Oh well, I have health insurance.