AMA recommends mandatory medical insurance-Is this "boil the oceans redux?

The AMA passed a policy resolution supporting mandatory medical insurance for those persons and families that can afford it and subsidies for those who can't.

Here is how I understand how the AMA perceives the issue.

The problem is too many people do not have health insurance.
Therefore, those individuals and families who can afford the insurance will be forced to purchase it. There should be subsidies for those who cannot afford it.

Who will decide if a family can afford it? The government will. Who better to decide how one should spend their money than the government.

Where will the subsidies come from? The government. Where will they get the money? From the individuals and families who can afford health insurance. The government gets all its money from the people who make money. One of the AMA's arguments for this proposal is that "cost shifting" has become a problem and the system has no more elasticity to allow for further shifting as if this proposal is not cost shifting itself.

How will the folks be forced to buy insurance. Well although AMA left many details to be worked out they favor the enforcement to be carried out by the tax structure. I think this means the IRS. I guess IRS does not have enough to do already.

Predictably, the libertarian CATO Institute opposes the mandated medical insurance proposal, both on practical and philosophical grounds.Michael Tanner, in Cato's policy analysis number 565, points out the difficulties in implementing such a program. He analyzes how relatively ineffective mandatory auto insurance has been with the uninsured rates in states with mandatory insurance being little different from those states without such laws.He writes in detail about the problems associated with various possible enforcement techniques.

On a philosophical level they echo AMA delegate, Dr. David McKalip who said " What you're doing here today will results in a single payer system"

Cato puts it this way:
An individual mandate crosses an important line: accepting the principle that it is the government's responsibility to ensure that every American has health insurance. In doing so, it opens the door to widespread regulation of the health care industry and political interference in personal health care decisions. The result will be a slow but steady spiral downward toward a government-run national health care system.

Does the AMA resolution confuse " Wouldn't it be nice if..?" with "Lets pass a law making it happen"?

When Will Rogers was asked how to implement his suggestion regarding the German U-Boat problem by boiling the oceans, he replied that he would leave that up to the detail men and that he was a policy man.Some of us feel uneasy encouraging the government to work out the details of our health care policy but it seems now the AMA does not.