Unable to increase penalties substantially, Congress, in the context of "guaranteed issue" and "community rating," has only one way to induce healthy people to purchase insurance. This is by the hugely expensive process of increasing premium subsidies enough to make negligible the difference between the cost of insurance to purchasers and the penalty for not purchasing. Republicans will ferociously resist exacerbating the nation's financial crisis in order to rescue the ACA.
Because the penalties are constitutionally limited by the reasoning whereby Roberts declared them taxes, he may have saved the ACA's constitutionality by sacrificing its feasibility. So as the president begins his second term, the signature achievement of his first term looks remarkably rickety.
George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.
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George F. Will is one of the most widely recognized, and widely read, writers in the world. With more than 450 newspapers, his biweekly Newsweek column, and his appearances as a political commentator on ABC, Will may be more ..
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Ultimately, if there is a strain of liberty left in an American, the ACA will fail like all other government programs. What will be left is a society in some chaos coming to terms with the fact that government has very little to do with happiness, More..
"...This plausible judgment comes from professor Thomas A. Lambert of the University of Missouri Law School, writing in Regulation quarterly, a publication of the libertarian Cato Institute...".
gw is grasping at a straw held out More..
Will the sour grapes never end from the right wing. Or maybe its just wishful thinking. Will, before you shut down the ACA you ought to come up with something that provides medical services for every American citizen. The ACA was and still is a More..