You now have the choice not to buy health insurance.
The foundation of Obamacare is the individual mandate. That is, without the mandate it was presumed that millions of healthy people would choose to remain uninsured, driving up the cost of insurance for everyone else.
The mandate was the core issue in a case brought before the US Supreme Court. The Court upheld the mandate as constitutional.
But now, the Obama administration has effectively waived the mandate through administrative rule making.
These new rules provide waivers for almost all of Obamacare until October 1, 2016. That’s right! The one year waiver previously put in place in late 2013 is now a three year waiver.
Further, there are now 14 reasons you can avoid paying the tax (see page 9) (“the Shared Responsibility Payment”) for not complying with the mandate (not buying health insurance). I love this one, “You experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance. – Please submit documentation if possible.”
Current 2013-2014 Obamacare Marketplace sign up statistics show insufficient participation of the young and healthy to establish a self sustaining risk pool.
Now, the waiver of most of the insurance requirements until October 2016 plus the effective waiver of the “Shared Responsibility Payment” will further bias that risk pool toward the old and sick, increasing the cost to those actually purchasing health insurance. In other words, there will be little or no “shared responsibility” and the government (taxpayers) will be forced to further subsidize health insurance pricing to keep insurance companies in business (through direct payments to the insurance companies unless the Obamacare law is changed by Congress with the President’s signature). Similarly, the government will experience ever increasing pressure to control actual health care costs, limiting patient choice and disincentivizing medical professionals and health care facilities.
Obamacare is near death and it is time to pull the plug. What we now have is a comatose political contraption on life support that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year to provide health insurance to a few million people. By any objective measure Obamacare is a complete disaster.
The challenge now is to stop complaining and start building a truly competitive national health insurance market supplemented by taxpayer support of those in financial need through Federal catastrophic coverage and direct tax credits.
Regards, Pete Weldon
americanstance.org