The current debate about forcing citizens to buy health care reminds me that many citizens of this country pay for a service from which they receive no direct benefit– public education.  Consider how many tax-payers do not have children in the public schools: childless citizens, citizens who send their kids to private schools, citizens whose children left public schools a generation ago, citizens who home-school their children, citizens whose children are expelled from school. That’s quite a constituency paying for services they don’t receive.

Why do they put up with it?

I suppose their theory is that children in school are children who will not become public liabilities by delinquency, unemployment or requiring welfare benefits. Public schools are a kind of insurance against anti-social behavior and its consequences.  Does that mean tax-payers finance a program that protects them from the liabilities of those who might not otherwise participate in the program?  So it would appear.

We hear a lot of this analogical thinking in the current Supreme Court arguments, but most of it comes from the conservative justices who wonder if citizens can be compelled to buy broccoli (Justice Scalia).  Are we not already financing the unhealthy by being compelled to pay for Medicare and Medicaid? Are we not already financing the uneducated by paying for their schooling?

I have always preferred the arguments of the high road to social welfare, such as “Who is my neighbor?” In the Parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus makes a case for humanity toward those whose well-being does not affect us at all. The Samaritan in the parable helps an injured Jew, who has no kinship or tribal connection.  It is clear he will receive no compensation for his trouble. He does it out of compassion for a child of God.

That’s a very high standard to apply to citizenship in the United States, but it is a standard many of its citizens claim to live by. Why does it seem irrelevant to the cost of health care for the millions still uninsured?