Thoughts on Today's Political Landscape

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by GRH

I take it that Tracy finds the individual mandate repulsive because it "mandates" the purchase of insurance through the use of coercive penalties (taxes?). Whether this is Constitutional or not has yet to be determined. But you can't deny the broad power to tax, can you? Congress has the power to tax income via the hallowed Constitution. It would be perfectly Constitutional for Congress to levy a healthcare tax on EVERYONE...Then offer an offsetting tax credit to anyone that holds an acceptable health insurance policy. This would have the same income effect-- people would be financially incentivized via the tax code to purchase insurance. However it would not selectively impose a penalty?/tax? on someone who chooses to not do something (even though the private insurance market routinely penalizes market participants for inaction).

I'm going to work so I'll answer the rest of your post later, but I'll respond to this part. If they had replaced penalties with taxes then they would have had a lot stronger case in the supreme court. But they didn't...