Growing up, everybody had a car. You really had to. Living in rural Snake River Idaho, the distances were just too great to walk. Our nearest neighbor was nearly a half-mile away. The grocery store was 7 miles. And an Idaho winter without a car? Forget it.But life in the city is different. During my three years in Seattle, I've met a number of people who don't own a car, and don't want to (unlike the myriad college students who don't have a car but wish they did). These are high paid professionals who live downtown, use the ample public transit system to get around, and have an Obama '08 mug instead of the bumper sticker. It's a different lifestyle, but it works as well as one's birth control. To each his own, right?
So I had a thought: Wouldn't it be both bizarre and poetically just if the government passed laws placing auto insurance on the same plane with health insurance--I mean the kind of mandatory health insurance that Pelosi, Reid and Obama are ramming through congress?
My pedestrian, city-dwelling cohorts would then be forced by the government to by a car. Well, not forced, but they'd be forced to pay car insurance, so they might as well buy a car. That would just be ridiculous to buy car insurance and not buy a car to go along with it, right?
And if your neighbor decided to buy a big red Hummer or a totally impractical sports car, your insurance rates would go up to help cover their high-premium choice. It wouldn't matter that you own, or would have purchased, a Prius.
So the next time you hear somebody on TV or the radio or at work justify legally mandated health insurance by comparing it to car insurance, you'll understand the seamless logic of their argument.
Oh, and if you disagree with me, you're a racist.
