The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative has joined the Colorado Medical Society and the Colorado Trust in spreading what’s effectively the “big lie” in support of mandatory insurance: the cost-shift from the uninsured.

As I show in this article about the cost-shift from the uninsured, the cost-shift is very small, especially compared to (1) how much mandatory insurance increases premiums, and (2) how much Medicaid & Medicare increases insurance premiums.

But Dede de Percin, executive director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, repeats the fallacious claim.  From a recent Denver Business Journal article:

While most of the decisions have upheld the health care reform law, these lower-court rulings are a distraction,” said Dede de Percin, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative executive director. “Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of asking people to take responsibility to pay for health care services rather than burden their neighbors with health care bills. We have every reason to believe they will uphold it so the the American people will have the affordable health care they need.”

The personal responsibility argument is also bogus. As Yaron Brook and Don Watkins note:

Personal responsibility? Forcing people to buy insurance they may neither want nor need has nothing to do with personal responsibility. …

Anyone genuinely concerned with eliminating free rides would advocate repealing the EMTALA, and phasing out programs like Medicare, Medicaid and S-CHIP, which allow people to pawn off their health care costs on others.

Read the whole article at Forbes.com: The Irresponsible Individual Mandate.