As reported in today's Oregonian, the new health care plan for socialized medicine has a provision that forces people to buy the plan if they have no other health care insurance- whether they want insurance or not. Since the tax is a federal tax, anyone who unwillingly refuses to pay is subject to a fine and possible imprisonment of up to one year. Now, to be fair, I do not think the potiential fine & imprisonment is actually writen into the plan itself, but is a matter of federal law for any federal tax. It's a reminder that failing to pay ones taxes can get them into a heap of trouble. For me, while I understand why the health care plan is being made compulsorary (or however that's spelled), I have a hard time the feds coming up with this slice of socialism and then throwing people in jail who opt to pay their own way in life.
President Obama's change on the issue of mandates has been noteworthy, yet not often mentioned by the press. He ran on the idea of not mandating coverage, and criticized then-Sen. Clinton for her position of mandating it. As I mentioned in another thread, you cannot remove the restriction for pre-existing conditions without mandating coverage. If you do, you risk the classing moral hazard. You stay uninsured and pay the penalty until you require health care. Because the penalty is lower than the insurance coverage, the bad actor pays less and the good actor must pay more to cover the behavior of the bad actor.
Maybe a bit- but the fact remains that if one refuses to pay, they face a fine and jail time if the feds opt to prosecute.
Since nothing of the sort has been passed and enacted, nor does it have an icecube's chance in hell of ever being passed and enacted, you can relax. Mandated healthcare insurance payment requirements are what cost Hillary the election, and there is no support for it at all from either party's voters.
