And the Winner Is ... Stupidity!

Yesterday we had a bit of discussion in the comments of this post about whether or not a possible devestating chain reaction was an intentional part of the ObamaCare bill. The idea was that the whole thing would go way over budget in short order as individuals began acting in their own self-interest. Some took the position that it was an intentional feature of the bill to wipe out the insurance industry and others took the view that it was the stupidity of ignorant Congressional staffers who wrote the bill.

Today it looks like stupidity won. Dig this.

But it's the text of the law that matters, and:

The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.

If they screwed up something that important, what else did they screw up? Or do you think they deliberately gave the insurance companies that loophole, in which case, the question is what other surprises are tucked away in the 1000s of pages of fine print?

And this.

And the footnote on Code F:

IRS authority to assess and collect taxes is generally provided in subtitle F, “Procedure and Administration” in the Code. That subtitle establishes the rules governing both how taxpayers are required to report information to the IRS and pay their taxes as well as their rights. It also establishes the duties and authority of the IRS to enforce the Code, including civil and criminal penalties.

So there are penalties for not purchasing insurance. But there's no serious enforcement mechanism allowing the IRS to make sure those penalties get paid?

Given the importance of the mandate to the health reform project, this doesn't make much sense. The law was designed to expand the number of individuals with health insurance. But without the ability to enforce the individual mandate, any expansion will likely be significantly smaller than projected.

The thing is more than 2,400 pages long. It was written in sections by dozens of different authors. It's a sure bet that no one had fully digested the ramifications of all the clauses. Instead, it was probably a grab-bag of special interest inserts into a general framework of health care reform, written by staffers who would be plowing fields behind oxen if they weren't boinking each other in the copy room of some Senator's office.

Here we see a group of congressional staffers bringing new components of the health care bill to the Senate chambers.