"Finding a plan for Oregon's uninsured HEALTH CARE FOR ALL"
David Reinhard

The law Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and the Democratic legislature agreed to achieves near-universal access by requiring individuals to buy health insurance. This should be key feature of Oregon health-care reform.

It ends the problem of the system's "free riders." These are individuals, often young, who refuse to buy health insurance. Instead they rely on the kindness of strangers and taxpayers when they show up injured or sick in emergency rooms, which legally must provide care.

Romney's original proposal would have maintained an individual's right to not buy health insurance by allowing folks to self-insure or post a $10,000 bond (as in his state's car insurance laws) to show a willingness to pay for future care. The final deal required individuals to buy insurance or pay a fine.

I know that Construction Contractors must take a test and in order to protect the general public from fly-by-night roofers and such to post a bond that the consumer can go after against the contractor.

David seems to want to treat the general population as if they are the evil fly-by-night general contractor that prey upon the local monopolist providers of healthcare, who just so happen to be finacially aligned with our financial movers and shakers and the Oregon Investment Council. Dave is in Neil's pocket, I suppose, and prone to an upside down view of the world.

It is a tax, DAVE!, even if it is not called a tax.

UPDATE: You could try to argue that the prices are too high and that they impose economic rent, monopolistic rent, upon us all. Imposing a mandatory insurance scheme is really rather hostile in that it is at the outer limit of the abuse of monopoly power.