Quote:The fine is in the bill. The awful truth is there for you or anyone to read. It will be against the law to not have health insurance. Meaning, no matter how rich you are, you cannot just pay out of pocket. It's not roundabout taxation, since taxes are a proportional levy against everyone equally (albeit according to a totally unfair progressive meter -- but, we've hashed that to death)...It is roundabout taxation. A tax levied against everyone equally just for existing is a Poll Tax. Failure to pay a poll tax is just as illegal as any other kind. This wouldn't be any different from refusal to buy insurance - it's just a different form of tax. (I might add, a particularly stupid, regressive, pointless kind.)
Quote:The point is that this is a targeted fine against an individual, which in order to be legal will need to correspond to some misdemeanor. But, if it does survive the Senate bill, then it will become a class action lawsuit as soon as they attempt to enforce it which will be taken all the way to the Supreme Court.I'm not seeing how a "targeted fine" against an individual for not buying mandatory insurance is any different from a "targeted fine" for refusal to pay a mandatory tax. It seems like the same principle
Quote:So again, since when has a free democracy forced by law its citizens to buy a product?Since taxes. They take your money, they spend it on stuff, and the only way you can change it is by changing the government. Sounds like this, no? The small difference is that it's you doing the actual spending, not them.
I really don't like this proposition. It strikes me as a "worst of both worlds" solution that will further enrich insurance companies without generating much in the way of benefits. But its implementation is not conceptually very different from ordinary taxation.
-Jester
Afterthought: Unless more has changed than I understand, this provision doesn't mean that you can't pay out of pocket for medical services. It means you have to be carrying some minimum health care insurance. But if you're extremely rich, it can't possibly be tough to purchase a token health care plan. Cheaper than paying the fines, anyway. They might object to the principle, but it would be a very small cost for the extremely rich.