post by Paul Kelleher
Matthew Yglesias approvingly quotes a 2006 post by Greg Mankiw:
These two ideas--scrapping the subsidy for employer-provided insurance and instituting an individual mandate--make sense to me. The individual mandate turns the traditional liberal idea on its head: Health insurance is not a right but a responsibility.
Is it true that ACA's individual mandate turns a liberal idea on its head by making health care a responsibility rather than a right? I don't think so. Consider Ted Kennedy's signature phrase, "Health care is a right, not a privilege." The idea, I take it, is that access to health care should be guaranteed for those not privileged enough to pay for it on their own. The relevant right here is a right to affordable health care. And isn't that what The Affordable Care Act claims to provide?
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