When the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate as a legitimate tax in 2012, consumers lost because we became required to purchase the consumer financial product of health insurance or pay money to the government to finance other things, because the tax penalty money does not have a designated place where it must go, eg funding other government run health insurance programs for non-public employee consumers.
The individual mandate is another government piggy-bank paid for by consumers to benefit providers who are assured payment, and insurers who stand to benefit from the forced purchase because they are guaranteed, by the imposition of government responding to their lobbyists, a client base for their products, regardless of how poorly those products (insurance plans) give consumers what they need the consumer financial product of health insurance for: Protection from the contingent risk of economic devastation and inability to obtain needed medical services and care IF they become ill or disabled.
Instead of outrage when the individual mandate was first hinted at, consumers bought into Obama's claims that he'd been a strong leader with insurance companies on behalf of consumers and had agreed to the mandate in exchange for the promise by insurers that they wouldn't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. This was bunk, because the proposal came in 2008 FROM the insurance lobby, AHIP in their publication that mirrored the plan Obama pretended he negotiated instead of the deal he made.
Led like ninnies, with little examination, consumers bought-in, in theory, though this clearly is not the same as a tax to pay for libraries or schools or other public services available for everyone, because in fact the dollars paid as tax penalites are not by law required to be used to pay for programs that might benefit everyone such as Medicaid or Medicare. Nope, these dollars go into the undefined coffers of government to be used for undefined purposes, untraced like a petty cash account used by lawmakers.
Flashback: Obamacare using the Affordable Care Act's repetitive "timing" con where provisions were carefully timed to avoid Obama facing defeat in his bid for re-election if consumers were tuned into what he'd really done with Obamacare, created a legal partnership between government and private insurance companies to bilk the American consumer, and "surprised" consumers with the individual mandate provision's effective date at the end of the 2013 benefits year, (after his re-election).
In 2012, the individual mandate was upheld by the Supreme Court as a legitimate exercise of Congress' taxing power rather than a penalty because it was indefensible to argue that the failure to purchase a consumer financial product, health insurance, should result in a penalty. After all, that would be like penalizing consumers for not having a credit card to establish credit and requiring them to pay a fee to the government for a failure to have a credit card.
Still, the effect was the same, the government muscle stood behind insurers and said, "Buy their product or pay what amounts to a fine." Now, since Obama's Administration protected government public workers, of course, their employer (the federal government ignoring that we pay for their benefits) preserved their pre-Obamacare health insurance providing superior coverage at our expense.
Obamacare also provided unclear pathways for spending the money collected in individual mandate "taxes," failing to require those funds be spent on behalf of taxpayers in public insurance plans like Medicare/Medicaid or Veterans benefits, Social Security and instead merely created an additional petty cash source for government.
Under Trump, first the penalty was defunded, to an amount of zero and now there is no individual mandate. However, state governments strapped by their irresponsible spending and bloated government benefits to public employee pensions, etc. have glommed onto the Supreme Court's "tax" concept and are instituting their own individual mandate. California is the latest. Similarly, the funds collected by states have unclear pathways of whether they're required to be spent on the consumers they're taxing creating simply another government piggy-bank tool.
Flash Forward: The shenanigans involved in creating the individual mandate unfortunately have benefited the most powerful voices in the health industrial complex, insurance companies that get forced customers for their products, providers who like dealing with insurance companies rather than individuals for payments because a) they negotiate higher prices and b) they have less hassle in getting paid, and government which gets a new piggy-bank stream of petty cash to spend how it likes.
Consumers remain the losers. Medicare for All is the same, with unknown tax increases to cover a program of health insurance that promises nothing except that government will decide what services and medicines and treatments are covered for consumers unlucky enough not to be them, public employees, as they preserve and expand their own benefits, and with a no-limit government determination of how high those taxes will go for consumers. With a track record of mismanagement of consumer funds, Medicare for All promises to simply be a bigger petty cash account for government.
Even without the individual mandate, which actually was proposed by insurance companies to Obama's Administration by the insurance lobby (AHIP) in exchange for a political quid pro quo to Obama who gained political clout claiming he'd protected consumers from being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, insurers are not backing off the forced purchase of their products and include continuous coverage provisions that penalize those without insurance for a certain length of time with higher premiums. Continuous coverage requirements are simply another individual mandate.
Under Medicare for All, these forced payments to insurance companies for their products and to government for failing to purchase these products are expanded under the same tax reasoning to some unknown amount regardless of how bad coverage is under Medicare for All.
Consumers should first and foremost require detailed information from government and require legal obligations of government to spend any and all taxpayer funded mandates and taxes on the programs that are used to justify the tax penalties and-or taxes to benefit consumers directly, not amorphous government infrastructure or public employee expenses associated with administering programs or allowing a general fund-type provision where government can use the money for its own expenses and the raise taxes on consumers as currently is proposed.
Further, unlike the fallacy of the zero balance social security funds, which allows government to raid any amounts left in social security each year for other government purposes and then claim that social security is bankrupt, the balance should be clearly limited by law to payments on behalf of consumers only associated with these programs with balances, if there are any, carrying over from year to year.
This also means not an 80/20 rule like Obamacare's rule for insurance companies, which is basically a joke, but a 100/0 formula where direct payments on behalf of consumers to government associated with health insurance must be 100 percent and 0 is permissible to be used for government public employees and infrastructure which already have ballooned and are subject only to audits by government for government, which like public employee benefits ALWAYS end up benefiting the public employee class only.
