Soiurced from: wapo.com
Confession time: I don’t care whether Mitt Romney thinks the individual mandate is a tax or a penalty. And you shouldn’t, either.
Here, via the Kaiser Family Foundation, is how the individual mandate works if we call it a tax: “Those without coverage pay a tax penalty of the greater of $695 per year up to a maximum of three times that amount ($2,085) per family or 2.5% of household income…Exemptions will be granted for financial hardship, religious objections, American Indians, those without coverage for less than three months, undocumented immigrants, incarcerated individuals, those for whom the lowest cost plan option exceeds 8% of an individual’s income, and those with incomes below the tax filing threshold.”
And here is how the individual mandate works if we call it a penalty: “Those without coverage pay a tax penalty of the greater of $695 per year up to a maximum of three times that amount ($2,085) per family or 2.5% of household income…Exemptions will be granted for financial hardship, religious objections, American Indians, those without coverage for less than three months, undocumented immigrants, incarcerated individuals, those for whom the lowest cost plan option exceeds 8% of an individual’s income, and those with incomes below the tax filing threshold.”
As you might have noticed, there’s no difference between the description of the mandate in those two paragraphs. That’s not because I’ve made some disastrous copy-and-paste error. It’s because the individual mandate works the exact same way whether you call it a tax or a penalty.
Nor is it credible to say that this distinction will have real political consequences. “Tax” is not a popular word. But neither is “penalty.” It’s very difficult to imagine the voter who loved the idea of paying a penalty for going without health insurance — aren’t penalties great? — but is morally appalled at the prospect of paying a tax.
And, remember, the individual mandate is a well-known policy that is already extremely unpopular. In fact, it’s the most unpopular provision of the health care law, and always has been. The people who don’t like it already know they don’t like it. The people who do like it are, at this point, well aware that they like it. The idea that, this late in the game, even one vote will be decided by whether Republicans call this already-disliked policy “a tax” rather than “a penalty” or “government coercion” or “jackbooted thugs making you buy health care” strains credulity.
Posted by writerdood on July 9, 2012 at 10:08 am
I’m reminded of the Kentucky Fried Movie where the bad guy has men in several different cells and has divided them up by men who don’t know where they are and no longer care, drunk men who don’t know where they are but do care, and men who know where they are and care, but don’t drink.
This is similar because of the cells. Here you have men who can afford healthcare, but refuse to pay for it. Men who can’t afford healthcare and are given it by the government. Men who have healthcare provided by their employer, and don’t care. And men who have healthcare provided by the employer and do care.