The Insanity of the Republican Party and the Individual Mandate

by Madeleine Kando

Republican lawmakers are now adding a ‘repeal of the individual mandate’ clause to their proposed tax bill. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the individual mandate says that every American taxpayer is required to have health insurance. Just like everyone has to have car insurance. If you don’t have health insurance you get a fine.

It is one of the legs of the so-called ‘three legged stool’ of Obamacare. It is ‘unpopular’ because healthy people are forced to spend money on insurance they think they don’t need.

By including the repeal clause in their tax bill, the republicans tell us that it can reduce the deficit by $318 billion. How can NOT paying a tax penalty reduce the deficit? Because if people are not mandated to buy insurance, less of them will apply for subsidies and special government funded programs. 13 million people will be without insurance, a big saving for the government.

That money saved will go to fill the hole that they are creating by lowering the corporate tax rate from 39% to 20%. ‘We have the highest tax rate in the world’ says Trump. This is a lie. We do officially, have a high corporate tax rate compared to other OECD countries, although US corporations never pay the full 39% because of the obscene amount of loopholes. Countries with lower corporate tax rates don’t pay for it by taking away people’s health insurance. In fact those countries all have universal health care and pay much less for it.

What makes a society civilized and ‘fair’ is that all of its members share in the burden of making it work. Repealing the individual mandate will not only make insurance more expensive for the people who buy it. With that leg of the stool gone, the insured will have to carry the boat without the uninsured, and make it twice as heavy. ‘By repealing the Individual Mandate, we will be able to give the middle class a tax cut’. How? Because millions of people will go without Medicaid coverage.

Universal Health Insurance systems must have an individual mandate. Otherwise the insurance pool that you are part of would go into a ‘death spiral’. If you let healthy people opt out, the pool will eventually only contain sick people who will have to pay more and more for their premium. Someone with cancer will have two choices: buy health insurance and go into serious debt or go without health insurance and let the cancer spread. His choice is either bankruptcy or death.

What does this say about our nation, that it would pass such a cruel law? It is only in this country that people regard it as a violation of their individual freedom to share responsibility. Well, you can have your freedom. Your freedom to be sick and die and turn this country into a grotesque farce of itself. America has reached such a low point in its collective morality that it is beyond comprehension. leave comment here