[quote]
How it’s a tax? If you have insurance from your employer then this law will not affect you. If you are self employed and decide not to buy insurance, you want a free ride when you end up in a hospital and declare bankruptcy?
Do you buy car insurance?
[/quote]
It’s a tax because that’s what made it constitutional. The same is true of social security, it’s a tax also so there’s no guarantee that you’ll get anything from the system. EMTALA of 1986 is law that made it a requirement for hospitals to provide care regardless of ability to pay. It survived constitutionality on the premise that if you take medicare tax dollars than government could regulate your business.
My comment was based on the constitutionality, not whether it’s right health care system or the wrong one. Health care is a contentious issue.
Everybody is probably going to need health care at some point in their life but most of us want somebody else to pay the high cost of having the best services on demand. Health “insurance” should cover the unexpected, the accidents, the random cancer early in a person’s life, not standard things that happen when you get old.
This law does nothing to change the escalating costs of health care.