FEDERAL PRISON and a $15K FINE if you don't BUY health insurance? I don't think THAT was the health care Americans really wanted.
I tried to find a source for your "federal prison" claim, but I could only find similar claims on other sites, without any of them quoting directly from whatever bill(s) that's supposed to be in, so it seems a little sketchy--kind of like the earlier "death panel" claim. Could you provide a primary source?
They can do better than that.
I definitely agree with that--I imagine most Americans thought this would head towards the kind of healthcare enjoyed in the countries you mentioned, not a system imposing more requirements that people take part.
All of this should have been so much easier for a president with his own party controlling both houses - so what went wrong? Did people expect too much from a person? from a position?
To be frank, I think that in some respects, President Obama is too interested in being bipartisan on significant issues. If he were acting more like the previous administration (or like, say, the Conservative Party acts here in Canada), he would've gotten his people in Congress to manoeuvre the reforms through without Republican input, but (from my perspective) it seems as if he feels he has a responsibility to act differently because that's what his election was meant to represent.
Ironically, his commitment to changing how things are done has mostly led to fewer things getting done. :/
• Section 7203 - misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year. Section 7201 - felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.”
Okay, I followed your link to Dave Camp's press release, and by following his links in the release to the Sections you just quoted, I saw that those are just parts of the existing Internal Revenue Code referring to any "willful failure to pay" income taxes.
In other words, you can go to jail for tax evasion.
I don't think this is news, and it's disingenuous of Congressman Camp (or anyone else) to imply that those are part of the healthcare bill, since they aren't.
Camp is also quoted as saying that this "is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15 000 premium [Speaker Pelosi's] plan creates," but even the letter he links to (basically an interpretation of tax law as it would apply to the healthcare bill) notes that "[t]he additional tax does not apply if the maintenance of acceptable coverage would result in a hardship to the individual or if the person's income is below the threshold for filing a Federal income tax return," so he's just making that part up.
That's just it--it's not in the healthcare bill at all.
The real part of the bill that Camp et al. don't like is the proposed tax for people who don't have an insurance plan. Camp apparently wrote a letter asking about the consequences of not paying that tax, and got a letter back saying what the consequences of deliberate income tax evasion are.
The misleading spin comes in the "prison for people who don't buy fifteen thousand dollars in health insurance." The proposed tax itself is 2.5%, so theoretically, even a person making $100K/year who (for some reason) also doesn't have any health insurance would have a total tax liability of $2500 (assuming $100K is above the threshold at which this new tax would apply).
Not liking the proposed tax is a legitimate complaint worth debating, and Republicans should just be honest and say that that's what they don't like and try to get rid of it, rather than try to instill fear with the implausible jailtime scenario. (Even the tax interpretation letter notes that there are fewer than 100 criminal convictions per year in the United States for willful tax evasion, from all sources.) They shouldn't make the potential consequences out to be something they're not.
I tried to find a source for your "federal prison" claim, but I could only find similar claims on other sites, without any of them quoting directly from whatever bill(s) that's supposed to be in, so it seems a little sketchy--kind of like the earlier "death panel" claim. Could you provide a primary source?
They can do better than that.
I definitely agree with that--I imagine most Americans thought this would head towards the kind of healthcare enjoyed in the countries you mentioned, not a system imposing more requirements that people take part.
All of this should have been so much easier for a president with his own party controlling both houses - so what went wrong? Did people expect too much from a person? from a position?
To be frank, I think that in some respects, President Obama is too interested in being bipartisan on significant issues. If he were acting more like the previous administration (or like, say, the Conservative Party acts here in Canada), he would've gotten his people in Congress to manoeuvre the reforms through without Republican input, but (from my perspective) it seems as if he feels he has a responsibility to act differently because that's what his election was meant to represent.
Ironically, his commitment to changing how things are done has mostly led to fewer things getting done. :/
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• Section 7203 - misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
Section 7201 - felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.”
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In other words, you can go to jail for tax evasion.
I don't think this is news, and it's disingenuous of Congressman Camp (or anyone else) to imply that those are part of the healthcare bill, since they aren't.
Camp is also quoted as saying that this "is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15 000 premium [Speaker Pelosi's] plan creates," but even the letter he links to (basically an interpretation of tax law as it would apply to the healthcare bill) notes that "[t]he additional tax does not apply if the maintenance of acceptable coverage would result in a hardship to the individual or if the person's income is below the threshold for filing a Federal income tax return," so he's just making that part up.
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The real part of the bill that Camp et al. don't like is the proposed tax for people who don't have an insurance plan. Camp apparently wrote a letter asking about the consequences of not paying that tax, and got a letter back saying what the consequences of deliberate income tax evasion are.
The misleading spin comes in the "prison for people who don't buy fifteen thousand dollars in health insurance." The proposed tax itself is 2.5%, so theoretically, even a person making $100K/year who (for some reason) also doesn't have any health insurance would have a total tax liability of $2500 (assuming $100K is above the threshold at which this new tax would apply).
Not liking the proposed tax is a legitimate complaint worth debating, and Republicans should just be honest and say that that's what they don't like and try to get rid of it, rather than try to instill fear with the implausible jailtime scenario. (Even the tax interpretation letter notes that there are fewer than 100 criminal convictions per year in the United States for willful tax evasion, from all sources.) They shouldn't make the potential consequences out to be something they're not.
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