I was born in a hospital...

...in Oak Park, Illinois -- West Suburban Hospital. (I won't mention the year, but those cars in the picture above look about right.) It was a Monday morning, I think (although my memory is sketchy), and I weighed over nine pounds -- the largest baby in the family! My dad was also born at West Suburban, and my great aunt was a nurse there for many years. 

Now I know what you're thinking: Who cares? 

Well, bear with me, because I have a point to make. 

I was reading in the Times this morning, "In Health Case, Appeals to a Justice's Idea of Liberty," about -- you guessed it! -- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. And a two paragraph passage caught my eye. It was about the individual mandate, which is at the heart of the case, and whether or not someone who doesn't buy insurance is still engaging in interstate commerce. From the article (my emphasis): 

“The young person who is uninsured,” Justice Kennedy told Michael A. Carvin, a lawyer for private parties challenging the law, “is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries. That’s my concern in the case.”

Mr. Carvin responded that the law actually frustrated individual responsibility. “They’re compelling us to enter into the marketplace,” he said, but “they’re prohibiting us from buying the only economically sensible product that we would want, catastrophic insurance.” 

It's that one clause, "They're compelling us to enter into the marketplace," that I find so interesting. And it's because we're all in the health care marketplace. We begin our lives -- most of us -- in a hospital and, by virtue of being human, are always in the health care marketplace. Even that "young person," whom Justice Kennedy referred to is in the marketplace by virtue of breathing. If he steps outside his home and is hit by a car, he needs medical attention and someone has to pay for it. If he doesn't have insurance, you and I have to pay for it.

So how can anyone claim that anyone is outside the health care marketplace?