If you don't have insurance you will be fined. How will they do that? Do you get a knock in the middle of the night from the Gendarme? Do the cops ticket you? What is it, a misdemeanor? Three strikes and they jail you? What?

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

The IRS will be in charge of monitoring your insurance status....

That seems like the easiest way to collect the fine from people who chose not to buy insurance. From what I've read, the fine is only $750 so anyone who wants to opt out and self-insure just has to pay a token fine when when they file taxes. I doubt anything can be done about very poor/ homeless people who don't want to sign up.

$750 could buy a lot of groceries. this takes food off the table for many
Americans. the insurance boys win again.

My point was that someone rich enough to opt out of having health insurance only has to pay $750. Anyone who can't pay $750 without missing a meal is probably going to come out ahead under this bill anyway, I belive the subsidies go up to about $80k for a family of four (four times the poverty level?).

$80K worth of what?

if what I hear from one of our local experienced MD's, the doctors with years of experience are going to use this bill as a good reason to RETIRE. enter the new Soviet style docs who will give you all the "free" health care you can stand.....

$80K of annual income is the cutoff for subsidized insurance for a family of four, if I understand the bill correctly.

Sorry to hear your doc is retiring, we've had a couple stop practicing due to high liability insurance premiums.

You will be asked to include a form with your income tax return. People who are employeed are required to pay insurance, if they don't, they and the employer each have to pay 2.5 of your income as a fine. The money goes into a fund to pay for the bills that dead beats and free loaders who don't have health insurance run up down at the local hospitals. The money is to be sent to local property-tax districts, which is what currently absorbs most of the cost to pay for scum bags who expect the rest of us to pick up their health care costs for free.