Not content with dictating what kind of health insurance it considers adequate for you, late on New Year’s Eve the federal government announced that it would now decide how you should feel about such mandates.
A Healthcare.Gov spokesperson said: “Detecting hesitation among Americans to comply with government rules telling them how to live their lives, it is henceforth required that everyone make this New Year’s Resolution:
“‘I will be happy about being told how to live my life.’”
The spokesperson added, “We are also concerned that young, healthy Americans don’t understand the need for them to sacrifice, er―I mean, happily contribute―by paying much higher insurance rates to benefit older, sicker, and more-likely-to-vote voters.”
He continued, “It did not escape the NSA’s, er―I mean, your duly elected leader’s―attention that young adults overwhelmingly supported us when we promised, ‘If you like your (fill in the blank), you can keep your (fill in the blank).’ Now that these promises have proven false, we shall replace them with two new promises:
“‘If you like not voting, you can continue not voting.’
“And, ‘If you like voting…sorry, the voting age will be raised to the age where older people get so much of you younger people’s wealth that they will continue to vote for our redistributionist policies.’”
As Cascade Policy Institute’s Satirist-in-Residence, I’m Steve Buckstein wishing you a Happy New Year, knowing that the aforementioned government edict didn’t really happen…yet.
Steve Buckstein is founder and Senior Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
