Comment & Debate
Stuart M. Butler, an adjunct professor in public policy at Georgetown University and the vice president for domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote on the New York Times’ Room For Debate in June of 2009: “A mandate to buy what? In automobile insurance it’s typically to protect other people against the damage the driver might do to them. The parallel in health is a mandate for me to buy insurance to cover emergency and catastrophic costs that you (taxpayers and insured people) would be stuck with if I can’t pay my hospital bill.”