I’d laugh, but the joke is on us.
They won. They own it and will use it to control everything. In the next few months lawyers, actors and journalists will determine how to turn this question into a positive campaign commercial.
The ‘joke’ gets more interesting: I had a conversation with my tax gal the other day. It seems I stumbled upon the real reason the mandate was delayed.
The mandate includes qualifying employer-provided health plans that are provided as part of compensation...this includes many public-sector health plans, sometimes provided as 100% benefit or provided by negotiated labor contract as ‘employer contribution’.
No calculator exists where anyone can do the math, but the ‘mandate’ is supposed to have a ‘sliding scale’ with those with ‘too much benefit’ being taxed and those with ‘not enough benefit’ getting a new revenue stream akin to the ‘Earned Income Tax Credit’ (welfare).
I’m just guessing a whole bunch of lib voters on the public dole (including a whole bunch of public employees at the state & local level, including universities, might have seen their precious tax refunds evaporate before their eyes and taken it out at the voting booth...so they delayed it. (recall it was said, “...pass it to see what’s in it...”...I bet the darker part of the ‘regulatory regime’ took awhile to get worked out to parse in a simple outline for our puppet’s handlers’ comprehension)
The mandate as a ‘penalty’ for not having coverage was just a very public smokescreen, imho. Who knows...