Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[Henry]

If you check the schedule for penalties for not meeting the individual mandate to purchase health insurance , you find that it's cheaper to drop your insurance and pay the penalty (they begin low, a couple hundred $ per year), and if there's a mandate that private insurer's must not deny coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions, you could simply wait till you're diagnosed with something requiring treatment, go buy some health insurance, and then drop it the minute you don't need it anymore and go back to paying a couple 2-3 hundred $ per year in penalties instead of that much and more per month for a HI plan.

Those who doubt the efficacy and sincerity of the Baucus plan might find the devil in those details.

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There is an age-old political tactic, so old and so venerated it's impossible to determine which party began it - and it's so old it may well predate both current parties - and its original authors are irrelevant because both parties have used it repeatedly, but it goes like this....

If you want/need to impose a tax, but the tax is known to be hugely unpopular among voters, certain to cost too many votes, you instead tax something or somebody those voters cannot do without, like utilities, fuel, food, etc. It works best if you impose this tax on somebody or something despised by the general tax-paying public, like, oh... big oil, big banking, big pharma, just about 'big' anything, as long as they are perceived - or can be made to be perceived - as an enemy of the common people.

So, you impose the tax on the 'big' target, they in turn pass the costs of the tax along to consumers - aka taxpayers - and the consumer/taxpayers grumble, piss, and moan, but most direct their anger at the forced middleman. In essence, the government has forced the target, via regulations and/or taxes, to become an involuntary tax collector.

Great gig.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Henry

If you check the schedule for penalties for not meeting the individual mandate to purchase health insurance , you find that it's cheaper to drop your insurance and pay the penalty (they begin low, a couple hundred $ per year), and if there's a mandate that private insurer's must not deny coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions, you could simply wait till you're diagnosed with something requiring treatment, go buy some health insurance, and then drop it the minute you don't need it anymore and go back to paying a couple 2-3 hundred $ per year in penalties instead of that much and more per month for a HI plan.

Those who doubt the efficacy and sincerity of the Baucus plan might find the devil in those details.

-------------------------------------

There is an age-old political tactic, so old and so venerated it's impossible to determine which party began it - and it's so old it may well predate both current parties - and its original authors are irrelevant because both parties have used it repeatedly, but it goes like this....

If you want/need to impose a tax, but the tax is known to be hugely unpopular among voters, certain to cost too many votes, you instead tax something or somebody those voters cannot do without, like utilities, fuel, food, etc. It works best if you impose this tax on somebody or something despised by the general tax-paying public, like, oh... big oil, big banking, big pharma, just about 'big' anything, as long as they are perceived - or can be made to be perceived - as an enemy of the common people.

So, you impose the tax on the 'big' target, they in turn pass the costs of the tax along to consumers - aka taxpayers - and the consumer/taxpayers grumble, piss, and moan, but most direct their anger at the forced middleman. In essence, the government has forced the target, via regulations and/or taxes, to become an involuntary tax collector.

Great gig.

Yeppers. And the practice has been honed to a sharpe effective edge over the last 2 years.

Originally Posted by Henry

If you check the schedule for penalties for not meeting the individual mandate to purchase health insurance , you find that it's cheaper to drop your insurance and pay the penalty (they begin low, a couple hundred $ per year), and if there's a mandate that private insurer's must not deny coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions, you could simply wait till you're diagnosed with something requiring treatment, go buy some health insurance, and then drop it the minute you don't need it anymore and go back to paying a couple 2-3 hundred $ per year in penalties instead of that much and more per month for a HI plan.

Those who doubt the efficacy and sincerity of the Baucus plan might find the devil in those details.

-------------------------------------

There is an age-old political tactic, so old and so venerated it's impossible to determine which party began it - and it's so old it may well predate both current parties - and its original authors are irrelevant because both parties have used it repeatedly, but it goes like this....

If you want/need to impose a tax, but the tax is known to be hugely unpopular among voters, certain to cost too many votes, you instead tax something or somebody those voters cannot do without, like utilities, fuel, food, etc. It works best if you impose this tax on somebody or something despised by the general tax-paying public, like, oh... big oil, big banking, big pharma, just about 'big' anything, as long as they are perceived - or can be made to be perceived - as an enemy of the common people.

So, you impose the tax on the 'big' target, they in turn pass the costs of the tax along to consumers - aka taxpayers - and the consumer/taxpayers grumble, piss, and moan, but most direct their anger at the forced middleman. In essence, the government has forced the target, via regulations and/or taxes, to become an involuntary tax collector.

Great gig.

Makes sense if you completely ignore the other Senate bill and the House bill and assume the Senate Finance Committee bill will be the final bill.

And, more important, ignores the regulatory process that will follow the legislation....unless, like Merc, you think Congress writes regulations.

What the latest industry report accomplished was make a stronger case for a broader exchange with a (limited version ) of a public option as envisioned in the other bills.

BTW....welcome, Henry.