The Letter of the Law
John Nolte is throwing sand in the gears of ObamaCare.
Here’s the two plus two: Starting next year, you can wait until you’re sick to purchase health insurance. And if you do so, you cannot be denied or even charged a higher premium price. Here’s the four: Because the ObamaCare penalty to be uninsured is much cheaper than purchasing insurance, why not do exactly that?
As I laid out in this piece, because ObamaCare allows me to game the system in this way, for the first time in over 25 years, I’m an uninsured-American. Going forward, my plan is to pay the annual penalty, which is ridiculously cheaper than insurance, and only purchase health insurance should I get sick.
As soon as the masses figure out this option under Obamacare — that there’s even less of an incentive to purchase health insurance than there was before ObamaCare passed — that’s how the system crashes.
For obvious reasons, neither the White House nor the media wants this information to become well known. They’re too invested in ObamaCare being part of the reason Obama’s put on Mt. Rushmore. But it’s bad law, Americans are not dumb, and I cannot think of anything more patriotic than to use civil disobedience as a way to bring the whole thing down.
Will you join him by becoming an uninsured-American?
This is the same problem (for the government) we have in MA, which is why I’m currently uninsured.
I was unemployed last year paying $270 a month for health insurance. I’m unemployed again, but f**k it, I’m not going to enroll. Hopefully I won’t need it, but will enroll if necessary. I guess I’ll have to come up with some money next year to pay the penalty, but it will still be cheaper than paying monthly.
Of course as Instapundit would say “This is a feature, not a bug”. Once most citizens are priced out private insurance the government will come to the rescue.
God, I love it when a plan goes to hell in a leaky hand basket!!
JFP is correct. This is not a bug in the law but its intended purpose: to break and ultimately destroy the private insurance industry. The seemingly-perverse incentives put in place by ObamaCare are designed to encourage people to buy health insurance only when doing so is an economic loser for the insurance company. The more widespread the behavior Nolte advocates the sooner the insurance companies go bankrupt.
What happens then? The left plans to blame the failure on the private sector and use it to get the full government-run medical system they’ve lusted after all along. No alternatives, no escape — just bureaucrats empowered to decide whether we, the people are worth enough to ‘society’ to be allowed to live.
So far, everything is proceeding according to their design.
Yes, exactly, this was obvious from the beginning to anyone who understood the rudiments of insurance. Obamacare was never intended to be a functioning system, just a means to the end of total government control of healthcare.
The noose is tightening around the neck of the country and the public is still smiling. I never imagined the end of America could unfold in such a surreal manner.
What happens if you are uninsured, and get, for example, hit by a bus? If you need emergency surgery to push your brain back into your skull before you have a chance to sign up, who gets hit with the bill?
EMTALA — you’re treated anyway.
Yes. This law has been in place for a long time. Emergency medical treatment is always covered in the US. But neither side likes to talk about this for some reason.
Ummm … I did a quick google on EMTALA, and it appears that while the act requires hospitals to provide treatment regardless of insurance status, it does NOT, repeat NOT, prevent them from billing you for same afterwards. This would seem to be a serious argument in favour of having insurance …
Billing and collecting are two rather different things.
Question: Is it moral to pursue the incentives to be uninsured under Obamacare knowing that it will break the private insurance system and lead to further government involvement in health care? I can’t say that I have much sympathy for the insurance companies, who supported Obamacare, but I do worry about the day when the state is the insurance company.
This reminds me of the climactic scene in “Unforgiven” where Muny (Eastwood) stands over Little Bill (Hackman) and Little Bill exclaims, “I’m building a house. I don’t deserve to die this way!” Muny responds, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
In this case, morality has nothing to do with it. Rules are rules. Hate the rule maker.
I already hate the rulemaker. But I don’t like seeing a course of action where people, including conservatives and/or libertarians, that leads to the complete government control of all health care decisions. Things are bad enough already. We shouldn’t collaborate in making them worse.
Moral or not, people respond to incentives. The maneuver as described appears to be perfectly legal. To put it another way, we see perfectly normal “moral” people gaming the system to put a few extra bucks in their pockets even when they could get in legal trouble for doing so: the taxpayer who “pads” his itemized deductions or “forgets” taxable income is a good and undoubtedly common example. (Hey, remember the Clintons and their used underwear donation? Perhaps not illegal but was it a good example for high-profile pols to set for the bitter clingers? What difference does it make????) Unlike those, this has the added benefit of NOT being illegal and the long-term downside is of no concern to those who are living paycheck (or welfare check) to paycheck. And after all, wasn’t it Keynes who said “In the long run, we’re all dead?” Maybe so, but just before we die, we can buy insurance.
Oh, Stephen. Worry not about this being missed. My wife took a 12 week tax-prep course offered by H&R Block for certification purposes. Some old hands in the tax-prep business attended. Much discussion about low-income EITC-eligible filers. the old-timers were sure of this: No other group encountered was as adept at gaming the tax system, and that knowledge of any possible advantage spreads like wildfire within that group. This point will quickly be noted and exploited.
“Is it moral to pursue the incentives to be uninsured under Obamacare knowing that it will break the private insurance system and lead to further government involvement in health care?”
Big Insurance is protected. That’s why they supported Obamacare, that’s how they could raise insurance premiums by 20% to 40% without blinking their lovely eyes. Big Business is protected too, by their special dispensations of exemption from the “mandate”. Who are the victims? Small business, you and me. Oh, even the Docs have found their escape route: set up “boutique” practices: charge a membership fee of a few hundreds per month, about $300 per month in the Equality Haven of San Francisco, from member patients who also pay their consultation fees out of their rich pockets, and file their own insurance claims. The envious poor souls who cannot afford the few hundreds per month have to wait in line for the Docs who are trapped in the Affordable Obamacare.
See, the power grabbers could only pass Obamacare with a low penalty. They expected they could raise the penalty later on. But when they “won” the Supremes by declaring the penalty a tax, the power grabbers can no longer raise the penalty without the approval of the whole Congress. Ergo, sit back and take advantage of the system as much as you can. Everybody else does.
I think it’s time to start building office space near DC.
Once Obamacare has bankrupted private insurance, the only alternative is going to be a government run single payer system. The army of bureaucrats necessary is going to need somewhere to sit.
Uh..Limbaugh was talking about this before Obamacare was even passed. It’s the intent of Obamacare to destroy the insurance industry leaving the government single payer the last and only payer standing.
Let me do the math …13 take away 9 ….uh…something ….four, ya four years ago.
A slightly different take on this landscape:
- Skyrocketing insurance rates: A win for the big insurance companies
- Established penalty for not being insured: A win for the government
Who gets ground to a powder? Middle class and small business. Priceless.
I think it ignores the fact that if you are in an accident and don’t have insurance, then it could get expensive very quickly. Yes, the hospitals have to treat you, but they will also bill you. They can go after your assets and make things unpleasant. My understanding is that Obamacare bans catastrophic insurance, so I think it leaves you really exposed.
If you are poor and are probably going to stay that way, then you can just do a bankruptcy and it won’t really matter. But I think the rest of us still have a fairly decent incentive to buy it.
Buying insurance after you become ill or have an accident ………isn’t insurance. And if you don’t actually pay for it, being one of Barry’s dependent class of supporters/voters, since you’re not gonna pay for it, it’s welfare.
Nice little racket the Dems/libs/statists have here, huh? Kind of guarantees them a consistent and growing (think immigration) voting bloc.
if i were self-employed or at a small business, then i would totally take advantage of the free lunch the liberals are handing out (while supplies last!).
the major problem with this is due to the major sham of the current healthcare insurance setup – the government has set the whole scheme up to propel employers to pay for healthcare instead of individuals directly.
as such, my employer contributes so much to my healthcare that i only pay about 40 bucks a paycheck, and if i opt out, of course i do not get to keep the difference. as a 30 year old healthy employee that could lead to too much economic freedom which the government protects me from. the money would just go to subsidize some old fat person’s insurance instead. the system is rigged such that i don’t get to keep any of the money if i decide not to have insurance. great scheme they’ve got there.
I’m doing the same thing as Nolte except I won’t have to pay any penalty for not having insurance. I have enough money in my pension plan to take it out and live on it for at least four years. So that’s what I’m going to do. I took one distribution last December and I will take the rest out in March after I quit the current job I have WHICH I HATE. Yes, I will lose a lot of it to taxes. 10% for early withdrawal off the top, then it’s taxed as regular income. But I don’t care. I’m one of the last of the lucky people who got a pension without making any contribution to it. Yup. Union. I will still have enough in the pension plan to leave to my daughter when I die. As a chain smoking alcoholic I probably won’t live the whole four years anyway, but I’ll die happy.
I’m going to put the money in a non-interest bearing checking account. No income means I’m not required to file an income tax return. So there’s no way they can fine me.
Is it stupid? Probably. Sure it is. I don’t give a crap. I stopped going to doctors years ago because when you smoke and drink it’s a waste of time. So I’m doing it for the satisfaction of knowing that this government will not get one more dime of money once the Obamacare mandate becomes law. Not one dime. Well, except for all the beer and cigarette taxes that is.
I dropped health insurance when I went self-employed about 4 years ago, and have saved about $20,000 in premiums over that time. A few prescriptions here and there that surely would have been paid by me out of pocket anyway. Young, male, healthy and single sure helps.
Now I live abroad where medicine and treatment is inexpensive, and for a healthy guy like me just as good as in the US. United States citizens not living in the US are exempted from even the non-purhase penalty. If I get cancer or something else dreadful and/or expensive to treat I’ll just head back to the US and sign up for health insurance. Cha-ching suckers. HAAAA-HAAAAA.
Just kidding with the laughing in your face stuff. But truly I sayeth, I will not feel the least bit guilty if it goes down that way.
But it’s bad law, Americans are not dumb, and I cannot think of anything more patriotic than to use civil disobedience as a way to bring the whole thing down.
I don’t think civil disobedience applies to choosing to pay a “tax” rather than doing what the government would prefer you do…
But apart from that, good on him.