Healthcare Bill: Pay for a Plan or Go to Jail
  • Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is prepared to jail any American who does not buy a qualifying health insurance plan if the healthcare bill she sponsored (H.R. 3962, as amended) is passed into law.

    On November 6, Congressman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, released a letter he received from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) in response to his inquiry as to potential penalties for failing to comply with mandates set forth in the so-called “Affordable Health Care for America Act.” The information set out in the response should be shocking, but such unconstitutional abuses of power are becoming de rigueur and have almost lost their ability to stupefy. Still, the details are sinister, and as the old saying goes, the devil is definitely in them.

    In a letter dated November 5, the Joint Committee on Taxation informed Congressman Camp that there is a broad range of civil and criminal penalties applicable to any American who fails to purchase a health insurance policy that passes legislative muster, or as euphemistically styled in the bill itself: “acceptable health insurance coverage.” As reported by the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest annual cost of an approved family non-group policy would be approximately $15,000. That is to say, as currently written in the bill under consideration, if a family’s health insurance plan doesn’t cost at least $15,000 a year, then you are breaking the law and will be held accountable.

    As for just exactly what a “qualified plan” will require, no one is quite sure and those who should be (the elected representatives who will be voting for or against the bill) probably haven’t read the complete text because they can’t fit the bill in their briefcases as it comes in at a hefty 1,990 pages.