How is the government going to build new prisons for the

[gopiscrap]

47,000,000 people who can't afford health insurance. If you can't afford the insurance you're not going to be able to afford the fine either. Usually when you don't pay a fine, you go to jail to serve some time in lieu of paying money. So we're gonna establish another set of criminals? That's just fucking stupid!!!!

[BadgerKid]

1. At least your taxes will go to support you

in federal prison. :sarcasm:

[Renew Deal]

2. Federal prisons create jobs. Jobs with health care.

It's like the circle of life.

[2Design]

3. at least then we will have health care, housing, food, shelter - not great

views or freedom though

[LuvNewcastle]

4. They'll guarantee jobs, too.

You can make blue jeans, license plates, work the fields. All for sub-Chinese wages. At least it's enough to pay for your smokes.

[TxRider]

5. Government won't build them, Wall street will

Private for profit prisons is a huge growth industry..

Thanks to the drug war we already have become the worlds gulag nation, improisoning more of our population than any nation on earth, even than places like NK..

Mostly due to the effects of the war on drugs.

[marshall]

6. That's why the IRS is involved

One avenue the government will have to recoup unpaid insurance will be garnishing tax refunds.

All bases will be covered, at least as well as possible.

[salguine]

7. And you know what the crowning irony is? In prison, you'll be able to get some health care.

[lurky]

8. Nah, It will just be a new Poor Tax.

Except that it will punish working class people.

Here is how it will work: Person X is self-employed, unemployed, underemployed, or even just works in some shitty job that doesn't give health insurance. When X tries to get insurance, he or she discovers that the cheapest plan available is $10,000 a year, which X quite simply doesn't have. X then looks at the fine, which is maybe $3,000, and decides to just eat the penalty. What choice does X have, really?

So then what you end up with is millions of people who are out 3 grand every year, but still don't have health coverage. Additionally, people who do have jobs with benefits will have even more to worry about if they leave or lose their job, so they are even more dependent on their bosses. Small businesses and self-employed people will have even more of a disadvantage than they already do, and will be less able to compete against mega-business.

Additionally, it is more regressive taxation, as well as forcing Americans to subsidize the insurance industry at gunpoint, essentially.

Finally, this will generate so much anger, once people get these massive fines but still don't have health care, that they will just decide that "health reform" doesn't work, and that we should just go back to some kind of unregulated predatory system. Personally, I think this is the plan if this bill goes through. Look for a whole bunch of horror stories about people being destroyed financially by health mandates, along with the headline "Is Universal Health Care Killing Us?".

[gopiscrap]

9. That means we have to go nuts on these fuckers

riot and go crazy in the streets if they want to pull that shit!