“It’s actually a dumb discussion. Coverage is already available for all from one of the following five: Employers, Veterans, Medicare, Medicaid, or Individual purchase. HRSC’s 9800 government paid clinics already provide lower level care, they claim, to 1 out of 13 Americans.
End ObamaCare tomorrow and all these will still exist and they existed BEFORE ObamaCare.
EVERY American will fit into one of those 5 categories, iirc.”
All true. I also take exception with the writers notion that there must be a penalty while saying there shouldn’t be a mandate. Nonsense.
The penalty was that if you didn’t have insurance you had to pay the bill. When I was younger my appendix burst and I wound up in the hospital for 2 wks. As luck would have it I had just quit one job and was supposed to start another so....no insurance. I don’t know about now but back then when the job finished so did your insurance at the end of the month.
Anyway I got billed by the hospital. I actually went to the accounting office at the hospital and negotiated a different price and a payment schedule. I paid every single month until the bill was paid. That was the penalty for not having insurance.
I took exception to that when I first read it, too. But he's not talking about a "penalty" like an ObamaCare financial penalty administered through the IRS. He's talking about prohibiting people who refuse to buy their own insurance from getting covered under Medicaid in the event of a catastrophic illness or injury. He would have been better off describing it as "facing the consequences" instead of paying a "penalty" to avoid confusion over this.