Republicans won’t be able to repeal Obamacare as long as President Obama is in office, but they can make a big dent in one of its most egregious and unconstitutional flaws: Simply eliminate the penalties for not having coverage.
At his post-election press conference, Obama reasserted that he would oppose efforts to repeal the individual mandate that requires Americans to have Obamacare-qualified coverage. All right, then how about just repealing the fines the IRS can impose on the uninsured?
Who cares if there is a mandate to have coverage if there’s no penalty for not having it? People would be free to get whatever coverage they wanted, or none at all, and they would face no penalty.
I have no idea if Obama and Democrats would oppose eliminating the fines. But since the widely despised IRS is charged with assessing and collecting those fines, it would be very interesting to see Democrats defending the agency’s efforts to squeeze more money from taxpayers.
Think some of those Democratic defenses of the scandal-plagued IRS’s money-grab might appear in Republican political ads in 2016?
If Republicans want a subtler approach, they can use the power of the purse to cut the funding for the IRS division charged with assessing and collecting the fines.
And there’s a third way to accomplish the goal without even involving the IRS. An August assessment by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) asserted that the Obama administration is allowing the uninsured so many exemptions from getting coverage that nearly 90 percent of them will not face a penalty. Quoting from the statement:
CBO and JCT estimate that 23 million [out of 30 million] uninsured people in 2016 will qualify for one or more of those exemptions. Of the remaining 7 million uninsured people, CBO and JCT estimate that some will be granted exemptions from the penalty because of hardship or for other reasons. … All told, CBO and JCT estimate that about 4 million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf).
If the CBO/JCT estimate is correct, the coverage mandate has been pretty well gutted already.
Some of the exemptions are very broad, especially No. 14: “You experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance.”
That exemption could cover just about everyone. So Congress could just clarify that No. 14 includes if you believe getting qualified health insurance would put an undue strain on your family or budget.
The point is there are several ways to eliminate the penalty for not having coverage—and Obama administration officials have already taken us 90 percent of the way.
If people wanted to go into the Obamacare exchanges and get a taxpayer-provided subsidy to help pay for their coverage, they would still have to choose from the qualified options. That wouldn’t change.
Eliminating the penalty, or allowing almost any reason for opting out of the mandate, just means Americans would be free get the coverage they want—or none at all. And health insurers could begin to offer the kind of health insurance people want, rather than what the government demands.
It’s a shame that Congress even has to take such steps to bypass Obama’s unconstitutional—regardless of what Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says—mandate to have health insurance, but it may be Republicans’ easiest and best option until the country gets a president who believes more strongly in individual liberty and an individual mandate.