1. This court ruled that the rest of the Obama healthcare package is legal.
2. Other courts have ruled that the mandate is legal, so ultimately this issue is expected to be settled by the Supreme Court.
3. The mandate to buy healthcare insurance was not Obama's idea but a Republican idea going back to Nixon in the 1970s, the Republicans in the 1990s and most recently by Mitt Romney as Governor in Massachusetts. In Obama's original proposal there was a public option which would handle those people that did not buy health insurance. But the Republicans were against the public option so as a compromise Obama went with the Republican idea of requiring everyone to buy insurance. [2] [3]
So Republicans in their finest anti-Obama mode now reject their own idea!
Mitt Romney, now running for the GOP candidate for President, has been forced to backpedal his successful accomplishment of providing healthcare to all in Massachusetts - which was based on requiring everyone who could afford it to buy healthcare insurance.
4. If the Supreme Court rejects the Republican idea of requiring everyone who can afford it to buy healthcare insurance, then the fall back is to do what Medicare D does. [4] [5]
Under Medicare D if someone chooses not participate, fine, then you have to buy your own drugs with no help from the insurance companies. Further, if you ever want to get back under Medicare D there is a big penalty to join.
Likewise under this alternative proposal, if a person does not buy any health insurance, then they are on their own to pay hospital, lab, doctor and drug bills if they get sick. They can go to the emergency room even if they don't have healthcare insurance but will only get basic treatment and will be sent bills putting them further in debt. If they get really sick (e.g. cancer) and the bills get really big, they may now want to get health insurance but there will be a big penalty that grows over the years. Basically, paying for the health insurance that they had not gotten. Many people may never be able to get back into the health insurance pool and thus will face an early death because they will not get the treatments they need.
This alternative has the disadvantage that it will probably result in higher healthcare insurance premiums for those that do buy healthcare insurance - depending on how many people refuse to buy insurance. First because they are not contributing to the general pool and second because everyone else will have to pay their emergency room visits. Perversely, it does have the benefit over time of eliminating stupid people who can not see the benefit of having healthcare insurance.
Of course, if a person is very rich, they don't need any insurance which is why this is being pushed by the very rich. For everyone else, why would you NOT want to have healthcare insurance?
