The cost of the individual mandate

Image via Wikipedia

IBD:

Democrats insist that spending cuts won't erase the budget deficit, but they're wrong. Places to cut abound, starting with a big piece of ObamaCare.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the individual mandate requiring uninsured Americans to buy health care coverage is unconstitutional. But even before that opinion came down, the Congressional Budget Office had said the individual mandate is too costly.

Well, not exactly "too costly." What the CBO said is that between 2014, the first real year of ObamaCare, and 2020, eliminating the individual mandate would lower the deficit by $252 billion.

The CBO report had been gathering dust until Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., shrewdly brought it back Tuesday after U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled a day earlier that the individual mandate was outside Congress' constitutional authority.

Supposedly, the individual mandate was going to be the key to controlling health care costs. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder were clinging to this nonsense as late as Tuesday in an op-ed published in the Washington Post. But like most stories about government spending, it has turned out to be a myth.

...

The Democrats trillions of dollar spending spree has many components, but this is one that is hard to ignore. It is also a lynch pin to other aspects of the health care monstrosity. The whole stack of cards should collapse.

Related articles

• OpEds: Assessing Judge Hudson's Decision On Individual Mandate (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Obama Admin: ObamaCare is Just Like Car Insurance (pajamasmedia.com)
• Holder, Sebelius defend health care reform law (cnn.com)
• Is This All They Got? (diseasemanagementcareblog.blogspot.com)