Recently, representatives debated LD 882 in the Maine House. The bill would simply bring Maine’s health care mandates in line with those required by the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare). Maine currently has many more mandates than even that 2,000-page bill requires.

We know from a recent Gorman study that Maine’s private insurance rates are projected to rise 38 percent when the federal law is implemented.

During a speech I made, I ridiculed the idea that my 20-year-old son should be required to buy health insurance mandating pap smears. As a result, Maine’s Majority is attacking me for being anti-women.

The point was not about women’s issues for my son or prostate exams for my daughter, or anything of the sort. The point is why Maine would require more extravagant mandates than the federal government.

A pap smear exam should be part of any annual checkup for any women of the appropriate age as determined between a woman and her doctor — not determined by government mandate.

As a result, I find I have to respond to a storm of criticism.

The good news is that no one has actually argued that young men should be covered for pap smear examinations, so I don’t have to provide a short lesson in basic anatomy.

I am being damned for suggesting that there could or should be any restrictions on the cost of health care. I am hearing that you can’t put a price tag on a human life, and that everyone has a “right” to complete health care coverage without regard to cost.

I have doubts about any newfound rights that make claims on other people’s income, but that’s not the thing about these hostile reactions which is most interesting. What really puzzles me is the belief that there must never, ever, be restrictions on the cost of health care.

That may be a nice sentiment, but it is a fantasy that has no place in the real world.

Health care always runs into limits. Governments either ration it (a limit and burden on the patients) or impose price controls (a limit and burden on the caregivers).

Private citizens confront the same reality.

If old age ever brings me to the point where my children have the choice of prolonging my life in a coma for another six months at the cost of their homes, their savings and their credit, I hope and expect they will have the sense to tell doctors to pull the plug. I believe that almost everyone would do the same, given the choices.

That may be a cold thing to say, but reality is often cold. In the end, reality will always prevail over sentiment.

I know that not everyone likes to hear these things. My only answer is that I did not invent reality. It is not my responsibility. It existed before I was born and will continue after I die.

Anyone objecting has to argue that, yes, governments are willing to use up all public revenue on health care.

With the current demographic picture faced in the Western world, any attempt to add excessive mandates to insurance plans will, by nature, disproportionately force the cost ever downward to the young. That leaves them with two bad choices: paying ever more expensive costs for health insurance (much of which they have no use for), or going without.

Unfortunately, that is the current state in Maine.

The bill debated sought to offer some choice, where we can, to those who are under the heavy yoke of Maine’s burdensome insurance mandates.

Lance Harvell of Farmington is state Representative for District 89 and serves on the Committee on State and Local Government.