"In Your Face, John Roberts!"

When a "penalty tax" on healthy working persons is the only tool you have in your toolbox to fix the unstable leg that is the mandate part of the three-legged stool upon which the architects and journalist-promoters of the ACA built, you tend to cling to it...

It won't work.
Some people are not as manipulated by money as others, and are not willing to involuntarily "buy into" this hot mess of a federal program.

Independent thinkers -- and young and healthy too -- can outwait you. "Time, time, time... is on our side... (yes it is!)" People don't want to pay for personal choices that they would not choose for themselves. Don't foist these costs upon the innocents who choose not to support the industrial-medical establishment. But feel free: Keep upping the penalty-tax, and keep trying to squeeze blood from a rock.

Ain't gonna work: people don't all price their principles like that... They're not free-loaders, or free-riders on your medical system. They choose to be non-participants, which often keeps them healthier in the long run. (Money spend on good food and healthy lifestyles can beat prescription drugs in many cases, as the drugs often treat only the symptoms, not the underlying causes...)

Best look for other tools, "wonks"! *

WASHINGTON — The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.

It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.

The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.

“In my experience, the penalty has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance,” said Christine Speidel, a tax lawyer at Vermont Legal Aid.

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* You say "wonks"; I say "shakedown artists"...

"Wonks!" "Shakedown artists!"
"Wonks!" "Shakedown artists!"...

Let's call the whole thing off?

ADDED: The trouble with wonks is, they only know numbers. Thus, they've pinned the costs of this program on a small group, who are not necessarily willing to carry the country's sickest and most vulnerable.

If you are going to attempt artificial social engineering on such a huge national level, you have to pass the costs on to ALL the taxpayers, wealthy "wonks" included. This, of course, would be politically impossible. They are banking on the fact that those who do not need medical services, and do not leave unpaid medical bills in their wake, will be brought to their knees by lack of legislative and judicial representation as they attempt to squeeze blood from rocks.

Again: not gonna work. They should be asking the healthy how they afford to keep themselves healthy and paying only out-of-pocket as needed, instead of asking them -- because of the low numbers -- to bear the costs of insuring America's formerly uninsurables...

Of the 10.5 million** Americans who get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, about 85 percent** receive income-based subsidies to defray the cost.

That leaves seven million** people buying insurance on their own without subsidies, because their income is too high or they are not aware of the option — a significant number but not a huge voting base.

Such cynical calculations... it's unhealthy really.
Fix the problems; don't pass them off to the insular discrete minorities, just because we are low in numbers right now.


** Pardon me for noticing, but I think the math is off here, too. If 85% of 10.5 million people on the exchanges are getting subsidies, then that leave way less than 7 million carrying the burden of paying for their own needs, and carrying the costs of others, no?


"Your Health is your Wealth. Don't Spend It All on Others."