...Poll after poll has found that Americans don’t like being told they have to get insurance or face a penalty. So the groups doing outreach don’t plan to draw much attention to it.
“For the most part no, because [the mandate] doesn’t apply to very many people at all,” said Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, citing government estimates that only a small proportion of uninsured Americans would actually face a penalty by 2016.The early stages of the enrollment push have been all honey and no vinegar. Organizing for Action, President Barack Obama’s advocacy group, has released two ads focusing on the law’s benefits. Other advocates are counting on Mom to get their adult kids to sign up. Oregon’s exchange released its first ads this week, featuring – what else? – indie musicians strumming on guitars for the “Live Long Oregonians” campaign.
No mention of the “m” word.
The GOP has no such compunctions. Republicans reclaimed the individual mandate as an attack line this month, vowing to put it on hold for at least a year now that the White House has delayed until 2015 a parallel requirement for businesses. Putting off one set of rules while forging ahead with another just isn’t fair, say Republican lawmakers, who’ll force House votes on each mandate Wednesday....
Monday, July 15, 2013
Gutless and Dishonest: the Politics of the Individual Mandate
Democrats are horrified to mention the individual mandate and Republicans waive it around like a flag but the reality is that it has been blasted repeatedly with a double barrel shotgun so many times that it is going to fine less than 2% of the population in 2015 with its twenty exemptions and can't be effectively enforced in 2014 anyway. (Link)
But rest assured, elected bureaucrats will waste plenty of our tax dollars fighting about it.
This is from Politico and Jason Millman:
