United Liberty

Would you like the IRS to have a greater role?:

[ObamaCare] would require most Americans to have health insurance and to prove it on their federal tax returns. Those who don’t would pay a penalty to the IRS.

That’s one of several key duties the IRS would assume under the bills that have been approved by the House of Representatives and Senate and will be merged by negotiators from both chambers.

The agency also would distribute as much as $140 billion a year in new government subsidies to help small employers and as many as 19 million lower-income people buy coverage.

In addition, the IRS would collect hundreds of billions of dollars in new fees on employers, drug companies and device makers, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

If you fail to buy health insurance and don’t pay the fines associated with that, you will go to jail for one to five years. I don’t see how it is even remotely constitutional for the government to force citizens to buy a commodity like health insurance.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) raised a point of order yesterday to force a vote on the constitutionality of the individual mandate that is a central piece of ObamaCare:

“Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,” said Senator DeMint. “This is not at all like car insurance, you can choose not to drive but Americans will have no choice whether to buy government-approved insurance. This is nothing more than a bailout and takeover of insurance companies. We’re forcing Americans to buy insurance under penalty of law and then Washington bureaucrats will then dictate what these companies can sell to Americans. This is not liberty, it is tyranny of good intentions by elites in Washington who think they can plan our lives better than we can.”

Americans who fail to buy health insurance, according to the Democrats’ bill, would be subject to financial penalties. The senators believe the bill is unconstitutional because the insurance mandate is not authorized by any of the limited enumerated powers granted to the federal government. The individual mandate also likely violates the “takings” clause of the 5th Amendment.

The Democrats’ healthcare reform bill requires Americans to buy health insurance “whether or not they ever visit a doctor, get a prescription or have an operation.” If an American chooses not to buy health insurance coverage, they will face rapidly increasing taxes that will rise to $750 or 2% of their taxable income, whichever is greater.

The Congressional Budget Office has issued a new report showing that 10 million people could lose their health insurance under ObamaCare:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that up to 10 million people could lose their employer-based insurance coverage under the Senate’s health care reform bill.

In new figures out Monday, the nonpartisan office said the net loss would add up to about 5 million — the anticipated loss of employer coverage on one end would be offset in part by the expectation that a new mandate would drive other employers to cover millions more workers who are not currently covered.

But the estimate assumes many employers, particularly small businesses with low-wage workers, would opt to pay the fine and drop their insurance plans. The CBO estimated this would affect between 9 million and 10 million workers.

The estimate was provided after Republicans pressed the CBO for details on employer coverage, and it added fuel to the GOP argument that President Obama’s claim that nobody will be forced to give up their private coverage is bunk. It comes in the middle of a heated debate in the Senate over whether and how the government should enter the market with its own insurance plan.

I’m no fan of employer-based coverage, especially while individuals that purchase their own policies are not given the same tax advantages as businesses and it hides the real costs of health care. The mandates on businesses and individuals that Democrats seem hell bent on throwing into this legislation is going to do so much more harm than good, not mention send you to jail if you fail to comply.

“There’s a lot of controversy over this section of this new health care bill that says if you don’t buy health insurance, you can go to jail for five years. They say it’ll prevent freeloaders of the system. Yeah, but – well, if they do go to jail, won’t they get free health care for five years?” - Jay Leno

During a recent interview with ABC News, President Barack Obama said that he believed individuals that didn’t buy health insurance should face some form of monetary penalty, comparing it to state requirements for car insurance (these types of mandates don’t guarantee coverage), and brushed aside talk of possible jail time for non-complaince:

“What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don’t, you’re subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it’s affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there’s a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are — are burdened by because of the fact that people don’t have health insurance, you know, there’s nothing wrong with a penalty.”

Under the House bill those who can afford to buy insurance and don’t’ pay a fine. If the refuse to pay that fine there’s a threat – as with a lot of tax fines – of jail time. The Senate removed that provision in the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Obama said penalties have to be high enough for people to not game the system, but it’s also important to not be “so punitive” that people who are having a hard time find themselves suddenly worse off, thus why hardship exemptions have been built in the legislation.
[…]
The President said that he didn’t think the question over the appropriateness of possible jail time is the “biggest question” the House and Senate are facing right now.

Yet more lovely details from the House health care bill:

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.  The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said:  “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail.  It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

This is something those of us watching the debate over ObamaCare need to pay attention to. Your health insurance, though it may suit you and your family, may eventually need to be changed once minimum requirements once statutory and/or regulatory requirements take effect. If Massachusetts is the model for ObamaCare, then be prepared for higher insurance premiums and stricter regulation of insurance plans or a hefty tax. Take it from Massachusetts resident, Wendy Williams:

For the first two years of the mandate, our IBM health insurance was seen as acceptable in the eyes of the state. This year the rules changed. The state requires that health plans cap out-of-pocket expenses for individuals (not including monthly premiums) at $2,000 a year. Our plan’s cap is $2,500.

Ten years ago, we had excellent coverage through a more gold-plated plan. But we found that it was no longer worth paying the premiums and scaled back to a more modest policy. Today, we pay about $300 a month for catastrophic care. If we went with the next step up in plans offered to us by IBM, our monthly premium would increase to $800. We simply don’t need to pay that kind of money for the amount of health care we actually consume.