Battle4Liberty

Former Atena CEO Ron Williams published an op ed in June 18’s Wall Street Journal explaining why he no longer supports the health insurance mandate. Williams championed Obamacare when it was originally proposed, but now he says he’s having second thoughts. Some on the right are touting this as evidence of a momentum shift away from the individual mandate, but I’m not buying his explanation.

Williams, like many other executives, supported Obama’s healthcare initiatives when doing so was politically expedient. Few CEOs had the courage to oppose the administration early on, some in fear of a Chicago-style reprisal and others willing to cut backroom deals. Companies like Aetna were told to work with Obama or else. Williams sold his soul and cut his losses back then, but has modified his position now that the political winds have shifted direction. His unwillingness to stand on principle is the reason why so many conservatives and libertarians are becoming disgusted with big business.

In the piece, Williams claims that he has “long been an advocate of getting and keeping every American covered. As a society,” he continues, “we have a moral obligation to ensure everyone has access to affordable health care.” Knowing that “access to affordable health care” is akin to taxpayer subsidies, I wonder why Williams places this type of moral obligation on the collective. If we accept that our society has a moral obligation to provide the poor with affordable healthcare, then we must defend the morality of confiscating one person’s personal property to meet the “needs” of another. For this reason, the notion of moral obligations must be discussed as individual considerations, not societal ones.

Williams now claims that after studying the issue, “it became clear to [him] that the legislation raises serious constitutional concerns.” This has been obvious from the beginning. Nonetheless, he is now campaigning for “bipartisan solutions that work for all Americans” regardless of how the Supreme Court rules. Bipartisan government intervention is not the solution. We need less involvement, not more.

Perhaps Williams is still campaigning for the interests of Aetna—I don’t know. He claims to have had a genuine change of position, but the facts suggest otherwise. Ron Williams is a smart man. He understood why the Affordable Care Act was both unconstitutional and bad for America when it was originally proposed. But Williams is an opportunist, not a capitalist. He stands for political expediency, not principle. Executives like Ron Williams corrupt the very system they claim to support. He owes us an apology, not an editorial calling for Obamacare-Lite.