The Ugly Truth about the Insurance Mandate by The Editors on National Review Online

The Ugly Truth about the Insurance Mandate by The Editors on National Review Online: "For Democrats, the Holy Grail of health care has always been “universal coverage.” The words have flowed effortlessly out of their mouths so often that most of them probably long ago stopped thinking about what it would mean in practice if their dream were ever really implemented.

Well, now they — and we — know. The ugly truth is that “universal coverage,” Obama-style, is a burdensome “individual mandate.” The federal government is not offering the American public something new and better that they couldn’t already get on their own. It is handing down a punitive tax on anyone who dares to allocate their limited resources to things other than one-size-fits-all health insurance. In the bill being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, U.S. households will be forced to pay $750 to the IRS for every adult without federally approved coverage. In other words, “universal coverage” in the real world would be another unfunded mandated handed down by the federal government.

What’s more, it would hit low-wage workers the hardest. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the average premium for standard family insurance coverage under the Reid bill will reach $14,100 in 2016. For a worker making $100,000, that’s 14 percent of his income. But for someone making $50,000, it’s a 28 percent hidden tax. The Democrats like to tout the expansive new subsidies they would offer to make insurance “affordable.” But the truth is that the vast majority of workers would get no such help. They work for employers who would be forced to offer them insurance, and they will have no choice but to take it. And though the employers would pay much of the premiums, it’s really the employees who would shoulder the burden in the form of lower take-home pay."