When it comes to health insurance, the attitude of some people is simply ... remarkable. Profit is bad, government control is good, and unintended consequences will abound.

The following requirements are derived from a document developed by a state health reform subcommittee. It is hard at work constructing its own version of health insurance. It does not actually include any people who are in the business of selling or designing health insurance policies or paying health insurance claims. They are assumed to be biased. The animus against private business in this group is profound. At least one member has stated, in a public meeting, that only non-profits should be allowed to provide health insurance. Others support people who run around proclaiming that profits are what is wrong with American health care.

The group wants an “enforceable individual mandate” that requires everyone to buy health insurance. To step up enforcement, it contemplates requiring the following proofs:

1. Proof of coverage at school enrollment

2. Proof of coverage at Department of Motor Vehicles

3. Penalty at tax filing without proof of coverage—equal to the cost of a year’s coverage

4. Create a central registry of the uninsured

5. Default enrollment of the uninsured into a coverage program.

These people are so bent on enforcing their view that they want to decree that if you don’t have health insurance, you can’t drive. This means that people without health insurance can be deprived of their ability to get to a job and support themselves, a particular problem in rural areas.

The verification on school enrollment is a perfect example of the unintended consequences of regulation. In the state where these rules are under consideration, homeschoolers do not have to register with any public entity, and homeschooling groups abound. Once this loophole is recognized, rules requiring homeschoolers to register with the state must follow. The teachers union will be happy to help.

Since a lot of people who are uninsured don’t have to file income tax, the tax penalty requirement will affect people with higher incomes who already have insurance, loading unnecessary overhead onto both the private insurance and the tax system. For the uninsured with lower income, the penalty is so large that it could increase the incentive not to file. This could increase the incentive to hide income, work off the books, or skip filing all together, not a good thing in a tax system that depends on voluntary compliance.

How one creates a central registry of a group that one cannot identify is an interesting question. Another interpretation is that those on the subcommittee feel that lacking health insurance for even a moment so bad that health insurance scofflaws, like convicted sex offenders, deserve to be registered and tracked by government for the rest of their lives.

In any case, a fact of life in the health policy arena is that the people pushing to bring health care under government control have a tendency to want to force others to do exactly as they say. They also have no compunction about deploying any available government registry or contact against those who resist their diktats. If you are overweight, like a beer or two, and don’t get enough exercise, get ready to be whipped into shape.