Lelo Nxumalo

So the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) just upheld the key provision of 'Obamacare', namely the requirement  that all people have health insurance. Needless to say this is good news for the president's base but those on the right fear that this decision violates their freedom to choose not to buy coverage. An economic argument in favor of the mandate was presented way back by Mankiw , Krugman , and others even before the Obama team added the provision to their own plan. I advise reading the whole 2007 NYT blog post, but here is an excerpt, "...the point of a mandate isn’t to dictate how people should live their lives — it’s to prevent some people from gaming the system. Under the Obama plan [ before the individual mandate was added ], healthy people could choose not to buy insurance, then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. This would lead to higher premiums for everyone else. It would reward the irresponsible, while punishing those ...

A friend on facebook wanted to know what I thought about professor Krugman or, to be more specific, his appearance on PBS , and below is what I had to say. [Krugman] is admired and despised at the same time by many as the video shows but I have read his book, " End this Depression Now ", and I have to say his arguments are quite convincing. Many worry that the book and indeed many of his NYTimes blog posts do not really talk about the implications of amassing debt for future generations. But his argument is that we are going through a slump right now, and for a lot of people in this country things have actually gotten worse while many of the banks who helped steer the global economy into the ditch got bailed out and have started turning a profit. He recommends mortgage relief - renegotiating contracts for example, to help the ordinary people who have seen their networth tumble as they lose their homes to foreclosure. Since the private economy is not showing sufficient eno...