Health reform: individual mandate necessary

When the Romney health insurance plan in Massachusetts kicked in - when people who were eligible for subsidies were compelled to buy health insurance there was a huge increase in the number of insured health people. So what? That is what makes insurance possible. Healthy people must pay into the system. If you could sign up for insurance the day you got your cancer diagnosis few would buy insurance. You would buy it when you needed it - like `just in time' manufacturing planning.

That's why if you repeal the individual mandate the entire Affordable Care Act collapses.

More mandate-relevant evidence | The Incidental Economist

Berkeley Dean Christopher Edley on John Yoo and academic freedom

Over at Opinio Juris a memo to the law school community by Dean Edley about John Yoo's fitness to teach has been published. Yoo is a tenured professor at Berkeley. His academic freedom and the burden borne by those who would have him discharged are addressed in a thoughtful memo by Dean Christopher Edley, the link to which is above.

Recently a "comedian", in a bit of "guerilla theater" intruded on Yoo's classroom, disrupting it. His home has been picketed and he is the subject of much vituperation.

Yoo is the principal drafter of the most notorious of the 'torture memos' and is a defendant in a civil rights action by Jose Padilla who alleges he was tortured by persons who claim authorization based on Yoo's legal opinions while at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. District Judge Geoffrey White has allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Yoo also faces professional ethics complaints filed by a citizen organization called Velvet Revolution.

P.S. - Edley's statement has generated lots of commentary. Legal Ethics Forum provides links to comments in the NY Times, by Berkeley students, and readers at Balkinization HERE

Images: Christopher Edley, John Yoo, protest poster