Like Taking Candy from a Baby

The citizens are smarter than the legislators.

We could be looking at a surge in creative ways to game this loopy new system. Say you’re a freelancer who pays $10,000, out of pocket, for insurance. Now that no insurer can turn you down for a “pre-existing condition,” you can drop your own policy and go bare. Pay the feds’ new penalty fee of, what, $695 a year? Then, after you are diagnosed with lung cancer or after you get hit by a city bus, go ahead and buy insurance again. If you never get sick, you reap a going-bare windfall of $9,000-plus a year.

Now say you’re an employer who insures your workers, at a cost of $10,000 a year per minion. Why not just cut ’em loose to buy insurance on their own? (Or they can go bare and surf the pre-existing-condition wave, see preceding paragraph. Pay the new federal penalty of $3,000 a year, per person. Voila! A $7,000-a-year savings, per head.