Marshall: Health care reform not unlike Genghis Khan

MANASSAS, Va. -- State Sen. A. Donald McEachin’s disclaimer ended up being apt:

“Please know that no matter how heated we get up here, we actually have an affection for each other,” the Richmond-area Democrat said Thursday night.

He made the comment before a Prince William Committee of 100 debate with Del. Robert G. “Bob” Marshall.

And the debate was, as McEachin advertised, spirited but friendly.

The topic: the recently passed health care reform legislation. McEachin supports it, and the western Prince William County Republican opposes it.

The veteran lawmakers didn’t seem to change the minds of anyone in the audience, but they gave clear examples of each side in the nationwide conversation about insurance coverage versus government mandates.

McEachin said that the health care law is constitutional because when you go to a hospital, you’re participating in interstate commerce, which is governed by the U.S. Constitution.

And the mandate that everyone have insurance?

It’s no different than the draft, the senator said. If the country can compel you to go to war, it can require that you buy insurance.

Besides, he said, encouraging the welfare of others is inherent in the social contract of which American citizens are a part, as well as the right thing to do from a spiritual standpoint.

But Marshall, the author of legislation that says Virginians can’t be forced to buy insurance, soundly disagreed.

If the “Obamacare law” can force you to buy insurance, he reasoned, where’s the end?

Will the government compel you to buy a car, a “Government Motors,” model? Marshall asked, referring to the federal bailout of General Motors.

And the interstate commerce argument falls flat, he said, because this issue is about the lack of insurance, or “absence” of interstate commerce.

“This isn’t the seedbed,” Marshall said before the crowd at the Four Points by Sheraton outside Manassas, “this is the catapult for a dictatorship.”

The delegate also fears how the cost of Medicaid could skyrocket in Virginia, as the program is one that’s shared by states and the federal government.

But McEachin said the new law will eliminate the hidden costs incurred when the uninsured seek care at hospital emergency rooms.

“We’re already paying billions of dollars in indigent care,” he said.

Under the current circumstances, McEachin said, that particular tab would be $1.3 billion over the next decade, according to state Senate Finance Committee figures and assuming a 3 percent rate of inflation.

So if the new regulations cost the Old Dominion $1.1 billion, he said, the state would realize savings of $200 million.

An audience member suggested another way of raising money to pay for health care reform: taxing unhealthy habits, similar to “sin” taxes on tobacco and alcohol.

Marshall quickly responded, however, that the idea of, say, a “fat tax” for those who eat unhealthy would be awfully intrusive into people’s private lives.

“I don’t know that Genghis Khan went that far when he was conquering his part of the world,” he said.

Committee of 100 member and local business owner Bryanna Altman, meanwhile, asked if allowing government into citizens’ medical lives would be the first step into further intrusion in the “boardroom” and “bedroom.”

That would seem to be a softball question for Marshall. But it was McEachin who made the most of the question, chiding the delegate, perhaps the General Assembly’s most ardent abortion foe.

Some people, he said, would claim that Marshall is “all up in your bedroom.”

Staff writer Jonathan Hunley can be reached at 703-369-5738.