MEGAN MCARDLE: Why Libertarians Hate ObamaCare:
I think people have a right to determine where their own money goes and what products they spend it on — even if that means they can choose to forgo a very beneficial product that would make everyone better off. Now, I do not think this right is entirely unlimited — parents can be forced to support their children, for example, and I think that’s entirely just. Even free speech can be curtailed in very extreme situations; it does not cover libel, or the proverbial nuthatch who falsely cries “fire” in a crowded theater. But there are very good reasons for requiring extraordinary circumstances to invoke such restrictions, and I do not think that Obamacare meets that bar. I am well aware that Obamacare’s supporters will disagree, and I doubt that either of us will convince the other, so I’ll leave it at that.
This is not a tedious rehash of my reasons for opposing Obamacare, though two years in, perhaps such a rehash is due. If it is, I will provide it in a different post. This is just a post on why I don’t think that the argument for Obamacare can rest very securely on the argument that we are simply cleaning up some ugly negative externalities, in much the same way that we do with noise ordinance and anti-pollution laws. That is not what we are doing, and if it were, we wouldn’t be doing it.
Also, libertarians hate lies, and ObamaCare was a lie through and through.