TR1982
Well-known member
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- Mar 16, 2011
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Maybe, but that assumes that people will be motivated solely by cost. You can pay some money to the government and get essentially nothing for it (only emergency care that hospitals could not refuse) or you can pay more money to an insurance company and get health insurance for it.
I'm not convinced that if people now have to pay somebody that they won't want to at least get something for their money. I believe that there are currently about 50 million people uninsured in the US. The CBO has projected that only 4 million will elect to pay the tax instead of buying insurance
That's a valid point, but it would only be convincing if the tax were the same as the cost of the average premium. As it is, the people who don't think they need insurance aren't any more likely to think they do need it just because the government is begging them to get it. Yes, their savings from not buying health insurance after the bill versus before the bill will be less, but it will still be savings none the less. It will absolutely convince some people for whom 2.5% of their household income is less than the average premium to buy insurance, but that incentive falls dramatically as household income decreases, up until the point where a household qualifies for government insurance programs. Assuming those CBO numbers are correct, of which I am doubtful, that doesn't take into account the fact that more of those 50 million people will receive coverage simply due to the expanded coverage provided by the bill. So the 4 million number may sound insignificant, but compared to the number of people the mandate will actually apply to under the new provisions provided by the bill, it is likely that it is a much larger proportion.
At the end of the day, if you want everyone to buy insurance you have to institute a prohibitive tax against deferring. The fact that the bill doesn't do that neuters the force of the mandate to a relatively significant degree. The reasoning is understandable; they don't want to penalize less wealthy people if they decide to opt out, but that comes with the territory when you force someone to buy something. A lot of times it will hurt them.