Rare News Desk
Republicans put up a valiant fight to kill Obamacare, but lost. Even their effort to postpone the individual mandate was nixed by the White House. So here’s the next step: Pass legislation to eliminate Obamacare’s penalties on individuals.
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While the mandate to have coverage is symbolic of the federal government’s effort to control our lives—along with being unconstitutional, regardless of what Chief Justice John Roberts says—it is not the key. The penalties are.
Eliminate the penalties and the mandate is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant.
Obamacare requires people not just to have health insurance, but to have “qualified” health insurance—policies that include all the things Democrats wanted covered, which incidentally is one of the reasons it’s so expensive.
That requirement means that millions of Americans will lose their current health coverage because it doesn’t meet government standards.
The only enforcement mechanism is the penalties, which the IRS is tasked with collecting. But without the penalties the mandate would be as useless as Obama’s promises that if you like your current coverage you could keep it.
In fact, eliminating the penalties is the best way to ensure you actually can keep your current coverage.
With a penalty-free Obamacare, people who want to sign up on the health care exchanges could still do so—if the government ever gets them to work. But people who want to buy non-qualified coverage, such as very high deductible policy or an inexpensive, limited-coverage “mini-med,” could also make that choice. No penalty means no restrictions.
Defending the penalty would also be more difficult for Democrats than defending the mandate, even though they are two sides of the same coin.
In 2009 the Democratic-controlled House version of Obamacare included the possibility of jail time for failing to pay the IRS-imposed penalty. Republicans complained and Senate Democrats wisely dropped that provision in the Senate version, which became the law.
While it’s clear that Democrats continue to support the mandate, it’s less clear whether they will go to the mat for the penalties, especially given the IRS’s recently-exposed shenanigans. Even a number of Democrats cringed at those revelations.
Yes, the president might complain that without the penalties, some people will remain uninsured—though one has to wonder why the government would have to force people to buy what Obama claims is a great product that millions want.
But the fines are low, especially in the early years, and many people will choose to stay uninsured anyway. Indeed, 25 percent of the uninsured say they won’t get coverage, according to a recent Gallup poll. The Congressional Budget Office agrees, claiming that some 30 million Americans will remain uninsured for most of the rest of the decade, so what’s a few more?
If Democrats are determined to penalize the American people, then Republicans should press for keeping the penalties at the first-year’s level: the greater of $95 or 1 percent of income.
If Republicans can’t defund Obamacare and can’t eliminate the mandate, they can try to do the next best thing: eliminate the penalties. Or force Democrats to explain why they want to fine the American people.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews
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