QotD, Obamacare! Obamacare! Obamacare! edition.

From Walter Russell Mead, this is the problem that Obamacare apologists face:

It might seem odd that the law’s supporters should need to convince Americans to purchase a plan, given that those who don’t will be taxed. But the tax will be less expensive than the cost of coverage. The minimum tax per person will be $695 per year. Higher earning individuals will have to pay more: a couple who makes $100,000 per year, for example, will be taxed around $2,025. That may sound like a lot, but the CBO estimates that the annual premiums for the least-expensive plan offered under the new law would reach about $12,000 for a family and about $5,000 for an individual (all figures can be found here).

This means that for a lot of people paying the tax will be cheaper than buying insurance. And since the new law prevents insurance companies from denying you coverage or charging you more if you have a pre-existing condition, you can always buy a plan later if you develop an expensive medical condition.

Over time, more and more people are going to figure this out.

Legislate in haste; repent in excruciating slow-motion over the next decade and a half.  You’d think that the Democrats might have realized something was up when the Republican Congressional caucuses collectively disengaged from Obamacare, back in the day, but apparently they’re only now just starting to realize the exact weight of the albatross that the Democrats voluntarily put around their own necks.  I suppose that I should create some fake sympathy at this point, except that I need to clean out the fridge…

10 thoughts on “QotD, Obamacare! Obamacare! Obamacare! edition.”

  1. This truely is the bad legislation that just keeps on giving. I’m wondering, when this all finally comes crashing down, if Obama becomes the bizarro FDR, losing whole constituencies and voting blocks for the Dem party. It will also be exciting to see how the media will spin all this so that it is the Republicans’ fault, perhaps even intimating that is was a Republican idea to begin with a la the sequester.

  2. And this process will either kill the insurance companies, or drive them out of the health insurance market… which is kind of the point of Obamacare, as “Red” Jan Schakowsky once pointed out. Obamacare creates a massive problem, for which the Democrats will propose a “reasonable fix:” their preferred solution, genuine government-run single-payer national health.

  3. I’m still betting it’ll crash and burn on implementation people who know whats going on (i,e,, those with money or relatively secure financially are going to sit it out and pay the tax or buy health insurance just in case.) The loss of those people is going to make the system top heavy, more payments then people paying. If as I think this country is going to have financial troubles about then. Well lets just say I don’t believe 2014 is going to be a good year for the
    Democrats. I believe it will be an epically bad year, as all the bad fruit in O”bamacare becomes known and the country’s finances start into a downward spiral.

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