None of Us Are Right - Obama: Mandate Is "Less A Tax Or A Penalty Than It Is A Principal"

RCP Video ^ | 7-17-2012 | Barack Obama

[Sir Napsalot]

Rob Wiercinski, WTOL-TV: The final question comes from one of our viewers; we're sticking on health care. Mike Baas from Perrysburg wants to know: "Is the mandate to buy health insurance in the new law a tax or a penalty?"

President Obama: As I've said, it's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principal, which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your healthcare, if you can afford it. Now if you can't afford it, you're out of a job, you're broke, you're trying to make your payments, what we're going to do is to actually help you have some security in health insurance so that you don't lose everything in case you get sick. But if you can afford it, and this applies typically to less than one percent of the population, if you can afford it, then go ahead and get it, and if you don't, we're going to penalize you so that you're not dumping those costs onto somebody else.

[Sir Napsalot]

Principle plus interest and compound interest ..... you all are gonna pay.

[Sir Napsalot]

Principle Principal

[circlecity]

Bwahahahahaha. Obama has “principles” against freeloading? Since when?

[Rummyfan]

But if you can afford it, and this applies typically to less than one percent of the population, if you can afford it, then go ahead and get it, and if you don't, we're going to penalize you so that you're not dumping those costs onto somebody else.

What a load of BS. If I don't have it, why can't I just pay out-of-pocket for any medical costs I incur?

Freeloader is the new meme I suppose.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

And the principle is that the government owns you, and you owe maintenance fees on the body they are leasing to you.

[alexander_busek]

[...] you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your healthcare, if you can afford it.

You see, if you're healthy (e.g., no prior conditions, plenty of exercise, healthy lifestyle) and have savings (enabling you to pay cash for whatever health care needs you might occasionally have) and thus don't need health insurance and thus don't want to participate and pay for others (who have terrible lifestyles and no savings and are thus more "needy"), then you're a freeloader, according to Obama.

Regards,

[Mortrey]

Interesting...

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/threat-to-obamacare-is-no-drafting-error/

[Happy Rain]

Traitor Roberts gave Guvmint the power to tax folks doing nothing and that's all she wrote.

If you don't buy Blue Cross, a gun,don't give birth if pregnant,vote Republican or listen to Rush Limbaugh you can be taxed into ruin or prison. What if the president and congress decide to tax the SCOTUS to poverty and jail if payments are not immediately forthcoming if they don't rule that "stare decisis" has three "i"s instead of two? What a nightmare Roberts has become!

[Foolsgold]

Speaking of freeloaders, what exactly do the un-elected, un-vetted Czars do ???

[Adder]

His lips are moving!!! His lips are moving!!!!

[Pollster1]

The principal is that you can’t choose to be self-insured, even if you are a millionaire. You can’t choose major medical coverage with the routine expenses covered by paying for your own care yourself. You can’t choose a plan that excludes substance abuse counseling and abortion, even if you don’t abuse drugs or have any interest in killing your own unborn children. The principal is that Pelosi, Reid, and Obama get to choose how you should spend your money, because they need people to pay for coverage we don’t need or want in order to cover the real freeloaders - uninsured illegals that they want to treat and the entitled liberals who demand medically unnecessary procedures that are politically popular.

Those of us who oppose ObamaCare believe in a different principal - freedom. It’s not even that ObamaCare is an atrocious bill that will raise the cost of medicine and lower the quality for everyone in the country, or that ObamaCare is a job killer that has deepened and extended the Obama Recession, it’s that ObamaCare is anti-freedom. Americans have the right to decide what we want included in our insurance, whether we want insurance or another plan to cover our expenses, and how to spend our money.

[bt_dooftlook]

You appear to be confusing the former for the latter - "tenet" vs "primary". I believe "principle" is the right word here...YMMV prin·ci·ple    [prin-suh-puhl] Show IPA noun 1. an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct: a person of good moral principles. 2. a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived: the principles of modern physics. 3. a fundamental doctrine or tenet; a distinctive ruling opinion: the principles of the Stoics. 4. principles, a personal or specific basis of conduct or management: to adhere to one's principles; a kindergarten run on modern principles. 5. guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct: a person of principle. prin·ci·pal    [prin-suh-puhl] Show IPA adjective 1. first or highest in rank, importance, value, etc.; chief; foremost. 2. of, of the nature of, or constituting principal or capital: a principal investment. 3. Geometry . (of an axis of a conic) passing through the foci.