Automobile? Automobile?

Ah, yes, Sixteen Candles. What an excellent movie! Grandpappy's car ends up in some riverbed or some such place and the chinaman (no offense to anyone) laughs uncontrollably. Did he have auto insurance? Probably. Forty-nine states - New Hampshire sits this one out - mandate auto insurance. So, why is there such a big brouhaha about health insurance? I posed this earlier in a discussion group I take part in fairly regularly and there was one response: it's the first law that requires someone to do something for simply being alive. I think the gentleman's words were anyone with a pulse would be required to have health insurance. One chooses to drive. One, therefore, chooses to buy auto insurance. It is not forced upon him or her. Interesting argument to say the least.

I don't think any insurance of any kind should be forced upon any party, be it at the state level, federal level, for breathing or not for breathing. But what about the damage done to my vehicle? The loss of life? The long hours at the body shop? Insurance drives up the cost of things because in most cases it means that payment will be made and be made without any doubt being cast. There is no free market when insurance, namely third-party insurance, gets in the way of things. It also allows us to readily move forward in life without so much as a care because we know that no matter how fast we drive, how much we eat, smoke, or have unprotected sex (that was for effect :-0), our insurance will come to the rescue. But that is what it is supposed to do, right? Advance without thinking of the consequences of our advances.

Perhaps, goes the song. Perhaps it's not so bad, this insurance thing. Let the state mandate it. Let the Federal government mandate it. After all, it's only there to protect us from one another. Yes, it is. Why? Because we have lost some part of us that seeks to protect not only ourselves but the others around us. Pass the buck to the insurance agent at larger and larger premiums (read, "larger and larger profits") and let's get on with life...with abandon and with little or no responsibility to our fellow man. Amen.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace. From the just west of the Big Apple, I bid you all good tidings.

adt

short hills, nj

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