Thursday, June 28, 2012

Obamacare as “Play or Pay” 

I have a new post up at National Review Online on how today's Supreme Court decision raises some interesting questions about how Obamacare will operate in the real world:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others have suggested that the presumed mandatory obligation to buy health insurance would be a very powerful motivator for those who today choose to remain uninsured to purchase coverage, even though the “penalty” they must pay is generally far less than the premiums for even bare-bones health insurance. In other words, the CBO assumes these people will go along with the program because everyone else is going along with it and, well, it’s the “right thing to do.”

This was always a dubious assumption, as it presumes people will act against their own self interests. But it would seem even less plausible now because the Supreme Court, in its language today, has made it clear that the mandate cannot be viewed as a mandate at all; it’s just an optional tax that citizens can pay in lieu of securing health insurance.

You can read the rest of the article here.

posted by James C. Capretta | 7:28 pm
Tags: individual mandate
File As: Health Care