Mandatory Auto Insurance is Not the Same as Obama Care Mandatory Medical Insurance

Supporters of Obama Care defend the controversial (one of the many controversial items in a very controversial bill) requirement that makes it a crime not to buy health insurance coverage, have been citing mandatory car insurance laws as a precedent for forcing people to buy medical insurance.

However, this justification is wrong on two counts.

First of all, laws requiring that drivers have car insurance are laws passed by and enforced by the individual states while the proposed Obama Care law would be a Federal law.

This is an important distinction because things like health, welfare, education, etc. are not only historically state responsibilities but, under the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights (which

reads: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.) powers in these areas are reserved for the states since they are not spelled out as powers reserved for the Federal Government in the Constitution.

The United States has a federal system in which power is divided between the central government in Washington and the states and it is important to protect our freedom by respecting and defending that division.

The second reason that mandatory car insurance is a poor justification for a Federal Law requiring every person in America to purchase insurance or face arrest and prosecution is that these state motor vehicle insurance liability laws only apply to people who drive motor vehicles on public roads. Don't drive on public roads and you don't need car insurance.

Further, in every state that I am aware of, these laws do not require that a motorist purchase insurance but instead require that they show proof of financial responsibility.

The most common way of showing such proof is with the purchase of auto liability insurance with a coverage amount equal to or greater than the minimum required by the state. In Arizona, where I live, motorists have the option of purchasing auto liability insurance, posting a bond, or putting up a certificate of deposit or cash in the amount of $40,000.

Unlike the insurance purchase requirement in the Obama Care bill which is about health care protection for the individual, the so called auto insurance laws are about having the ability to compensate victims of one's careless actions.From ancient times, most societies have held individuals accountable for their actions and have required people to pay the cost of repairing damage their actions have caused to other people or their property.

In other words, these laws are about being able to compensate victims of ones careless or negligent actions for their losses. No state that I know of requires people to carry insurance to shield themselves from the cost of damage to their person or property from their carelessness.

If I am responsible for an accident in which both my vehicle and the victim's vehicle are destroyed my mandatory auto liability insurance will only pay for the damage to the other vehicle and not to my own.

I can, of course, voluntarily purchase optional collision coverage to pay for repairs to my car for damage caused by me but there is no legal requirement for this. If I finance the purchase of the car the lender will probably require that I purchase such coverage as a condition of the loan but that is the lender's requirement, not the government's.

Here again, the proposed Obama Care requirement is mandating that people purchase insurance to compensate them for the cost of caring for their own illnesses and not to compensate others for the cost of caring for illness spread by a sick person.

Like many other parts of this pending legislation, the mandate that people purchase insurance or face fines or criminal prosecution is certain to be challenged in court as an infringement on our liberty and the government's attorneys will have a difficult time defending it if all they offer as precedent to justify such an assault on our liberty is a flimsy comparison with auto liability insurance requirements for motorists.