Thursday, April 1, 2010

Mandate, Pick One: Unconstitutional or Unenforceable

Jed Lewison, from DailyKos, writes:

First, the health care bill does not give IRS employees any power to enforce the mandate -- there will be no audits, no IRS agents, not even any penalties.

Daily Kos, of course, wants to view this in only the best way possible: The mandate is so constitutional you can't scare up a law professor to take the other side, they say. And it won't lead to more IRS hiring, no sir, because it won't be enforced.

If the mandate can't be enforced, then it won't be followed. And that means that healthy people can drop out of insurance at no risk to themselves. If they get sick, they can buy insurance then, and be guaranteed coverage because pre-existing conditions must be covered under the health reform bill.

If what Lewison says is true, then it really doesn't matter if the mandate is declared unconstitutional. The bill is already a failure.

No comments:

Post a Comment