Post-Christmas Thoughts of 2015 Individual Mandate Penalties

1. A penalty imposed for a violation of a law. 2.loss, forfeiture, suffering to which a person subjects himself by nonfullfillment of some obligation. 3. Something that is forfeited, as a sum of money.

Penalty

I hate to be a spoilsport but the time has come to start thinking about penalties imposed by ObamaCare’s individual mandate, which imposes a $95 penalty on you in 2015 if you did not buy health insurance in 2014, or if you did not report a change in income, or if there was some change in your life or health status, or a death in the family, or if you did not faithfully or accurately fill out ObamaCare forms or follow ObamaCare procedures.

The what ifs , whys, whens, and wheres of the individual mandates may drive you crazy because your phone calls and web inquiries to the IRS , HHS, CMS, or healthcare.gov may not be answered, or may require hours of waiting on the phone.

Don’t worry. If you fail to act or cannot act, the IRS will deduct $95 this year or $395 next year from your tax refund, which this year averages about $3000 for the average American.

Fret not. The individual mandate is an act based on a high, idealistic motive that all Americans’ health care ought to be covered by some other American, and other Americans ought to be penalized for violating the law through loss of money, even if he or she does not understand the law or its bureaucratic details, and does not know where or how to go to find out those details.

The Devil may be in the details, but the Devil may be inaccessible.

Take solace in the fact that this sort of thing is inevitable in a top-down government bureaucracy.

As Peter Drucker (1909-2006), the conservative and pragmatic social historian commented,

“The best we get from government in the welfare states is competent mediocrity. What is impressive is the administrative incompetence. Every country reports the same confusion, the same lacok of performance, the same proliferation of agencies , or programs, or forms.”

Relax. Your government, with its mediocre and imcompetent programs, will take care of itself. In 2014, it imposed $500 billion in 20 new taxes, 2500 pages of new regulations, created 159 new federal health care agencies, is projected to spend $1.4 trillion or more in next ten years in its health law and to exceed $20 trillion dollars in national debt.

Government health insurance is in good hands with itself and will good care of itself.