Pelosi's Healthcare Vision: Government Mandate or Jail

Failing to purchase “acceptable health insurance coverage” could result in a fine punishable “up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” Those are direct quotes from a letter of analysis done by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a non-partisan analysis committee in Congress. While that policy may not be one of Nancy Pelosi’s main talking points about her healthcare takeover legislation, it is an undoubtedly destructive portion of her healthcare bill, part of the reason it passed with only two votes to spare.

For months now, we’ve heard about the merits of Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare overhaul. To hear it from Democrats, the healthcare overhaul would be all things to all people, forever solving America’s healthcare woes. So if the Speaker’s plan is so fantastic, why do Democrats need to criminalize Americans to coax them into this plan?

Americans struggle enough already with a historically weak economy, high taxes and the looming burden of having to pay off an enormous federal debt. In Illinois, unemployment is already 10.5%, and Chicago-area residents just endured property tax increases to the tune of 20% in some areas. With this sort of abuse to their bank accounts, the last thing folks need is more taxes – but Pelosi’s plan shovels them on.

The Pelosi healthcare overhaul is a mandate lockdown.

First, it will raise the cost of purchasing “acceptable” health insurance. If you do not purchase health insurance Pelosi deems “acceptable,” you get slammed with an income tax increase. And what happens if you can’t afford or choose not to purchase that “acceptable” insurance? You can eventually be punished by a fine of “up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.”

While most Americans agree that we need healthcare reform that lowers costs and increases access, this is a textbook example of the bureaucratic horrors Americans will face from these kinds of mandates and requirements. The Pelosi overhaul is littered with 3,425 “shalls,” and the threat of jailtime accurately shows that Pelosi means the “shalls” to be a “must.” Of course, she thinks this is “fair.”

While Republicans would work to lower costs and increase access by opening markets, increasing real competition, and dealing with pre-existing conditions, Pelosi’s overhaul relies on requirements, mandates, taxes and even imprisonment. When it all comes down to it, if the Pelosi overhaul is such a good plan, then people will join it – willingly. But Democrats know better. Remember, they defeated an amendment which would require Members of Congress to use the “public option.” So they’ll send you to prison for not using the health insurance that they wouldn’t use themselves.