Health Bill Ramifications

Although it is still way too early to forecast how the Health Care Bill will play out, Mish recently posted some interesting comments.

Basically, it is much cheaper for businesses to pay the fine for not insuring employees. The fine is $2000 per year, whereas insurance runs closer to $6000. Similarly, it is cheaper as well for individuals to pay the fine, which runs from $700 to $2300 per year, than to buy their own policy, which for me would run around $6000. If worse comes to worse and one is diagnosed with an expensive medical condition, one can buy a policy at that point because they cannot be excluded for pre-existing conditions. Just paying the fine ends up being a very cost-effective strategy. The only place where one could still get hit is emergency treatment.

So who knows, this bill might actually move us toward the free-market solutions I desire, where one just has to pay $2000 for the government to stay out of our business; a bargain indeed. One can game the system by buying insurance only when they develop a costly medical condition.