Obamacare: Failure to buy coverage is punishable by the IRS?
From the Wall Street Journal:
President Obama’s effort to deny that his mandate to buy insurance is a tax has taken another thumping, this time from fellow Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee.
Chairman Max Baucus’s bill includes the so-called individual mandate, along with what he calls a $1,900 “excise tax” if you don’t buy health insurance. (It had been as much as $3,800 but Democrats reduced the amount last week to minimize the political sticker shock.) And, lo, it turns out that if you don’t pay that tax, the IRS could punish you with a $25,000 fine or up to a year in jail, or both.
Under questioning last week, Tom Barthold, the chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, admitted that the individual mandate would become a part of the Internal Revenue Code and that failing to comply “could be criminal, yes, if it were considered an attempt to defraud.”
“…..the individual mandate would become a part of the Internal Revenue Code.”
A show of hands for anyone comfortable with a $1900 tax and criminal IRS enforcement on insurance coverage?
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Comments
The mandate is bad policy. If we’re going to intrude in the market so far as to require people to buy a specific product or service, we might as well nationalize it. And of course, there’s that moral point Stan wisely brings up.
Besides, $1900 won’t do the job. I could cut my costs in half by dumping my crappy insurance policy, paying the IRS fine to support care for others, and going to the emergency room when necessary.
Stan, we already have what you are proposing. So what then is “basic”? If a woman gets breast cancer, is she treated? If a man has a severe heart attack, is he treated? What if that breast cancer is advanced? What happens if that guy flat-lines?
The way I see it, it is your responsibility to see to it you have coverage. Rather than destroy a system in which 4 out of 5 people are happy with it, would it not be better to provide for those few who are truly un-insurable? I think it would cost a lot less. According to Gallup, 61% of Americans believe health insurance is a personal responsibility. Interestingly, 35% of Democrats believe that.
caheidelberger: what you described is the law of unintended consequences.
Corey,
You are exactly correct. To affect any change in health care, we either have to make it a federal entitlement via a single payer system or market based reforms. The current Obama/Baucus solution is a compromise that results in disaster and the cure is worse than the disease.
I’m totally shocked my civil libertarian liberals aren’t appalled by the statist use of the IRS to penalize free choice of Americans.
But, I’m pleased that my liberal friends concede that Obama’s claim that this is not a tax on the middle class is dishonest and they are appalled by his lack of candor. They also concede that the public option is the first step to a single payer system. While the Democrats in the Senate and the President try to obfuscate issues, the public is seeing the truth. American democracy works and is a good thing!
This policy makes the middle class feel like the upper class by receiving fines for not paying taxes! Yes, HE can!
So basically once there are new options put into place, we should still continue to let people choose to purchase it or not with no punishment? Isn’t that one of the largest problems with health coverage today? With nearly 46 million Americans right now with a good portion of them that can afford it, but just choose they would rather be uninsured that pay their premiums. Yet, when they desperately need health coverage, they still get it at the expense of those who make the responsible choice of paying for coverage.
But yeah..you guys are right. Let’s not make people pay for coverage. Let’s come up with an option for the citizens, but if they don’t want it, they don’t have to have it. Considering America spends billions of dollars a year on health insurance, a penalty of $1900 is something hardly to whine about. But if you guys think this punishment is just stepping WAY outside the boundaries of our government, we’ll do it your way. We will continue to let people pay for insurance if they choose to do so, and for those who don’t want to, no punishment whatsoever. Then when health care in America is still exhausted, make sure you are blaming the left wing for all of the problems.
This is a revolution in US law! We simply tax those citizens whose behavior we find obnoxious! Why didn’t we think of this before? We would never waste the public’s time or money, or clog up the court system. No more habeas corpus, no more due process! We could use this for everything! Pothead? Tax em! Too fat? Tax em! Statements we don’t like? Tax em! (quietly burns the Constitution, paying particular attention to the 16th ammendment).
BTW, it would be great if you would go ahead and provide full citations for all of your quotations (just so they can be checked). Thanks!
If you don’t buy insurance and you don’t pay the fine for failure to comply, then under the proposed plans, the IRS could view that defiance as a failure to pay all of the tax you owe. That’s against the law already.
We must be careful, however, to call the fine a tax, even if it’s really a fine … leave that to the lawyers.
I recoil from the whole idea of a mandate that requires any citizen to purchase any product. But there’s a simple way out: socialized medicine. No mandates, no penalties, no criminal sanctions. If you’re a citizen, you would get basic coverage, and you would pay for it as part of your income tax. You wouldn’t have to buy health insurance, any more than you have to buy the right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.
Taxes might go up (but there would be no more insurance premiums, lawyers’ fees, or anxiety attacks about whether or not the payer will honor their contract). There ought to be a way to figure out how to distribute the tax burden fairly, as a function of income.
Although I’m conservative on most issues, I’m a radical leftist on this one. I agree with one of my Canadian colleagues here. She would ask, “How can we +not+ believe that every citizen of a civilized nation is entitled to basic health care?”
Well, how can’t we?