Not missing the bus.
In
#132 I clearly state, if they cant afford the requirement to buy insurance (a 7% tax for a single adult making 25k) they can always pay the penalty.
Forcing one to buy insurance that, even though its only $140 a month, many cant afford or fining those who dont. What was solved for those who cant afford insurance but dont qualify for handouts? 25k a year aint exactly big pimpin.
Okay here's the problem. You're implying there is a requirement to buy insurance. There isn't.
There is a requirement to pay the tax, you may
alleviate the tax by buying insurance. That's how tax penalties work. It's a bit of a chicken before the egg argument you're making, except in this case the tax always come first. The tax is levied against you unless you demonstrate that you've retained insurance--which is to say this is nothing more than a tax hike.
The default case here is that you pay $95 or 1% of your income as a tax. This is the tax.
What happens if you go out and spend 7% of your income on health insurance is that the $95/1% tax which has been levied against you is no longer due. It doesn't ALSO become a "tax".
So its not a 7% tax, it's at WORST a 1% tax. Anyone making 25K qualifies for the government subsidy and will pay $150 a year. In fact, something like 50-60% of Americans qualify for the subsidy and a further ~35% have benefits through employers (many of which are government jobs).
The people who are left by the wayside on this one will tend to be extremely well off.
No one is
forced to buy insurance at all. They are
forced to pay a tax.
There is a tax penalty which
encourages people to buy insurance, but it stops well short of forcing them.
It might seem like splitting hairs, but when you say it your way it makes it seem like the government is damning you if you do and damning you if you don't--when the reality couldn't be further from the truth.
What the policy is trying to do is to nudge America in a direction, and to be perfectly honest it has taken EXTREMELY conservative steps to do it. This is FAR from a healthcare overhaul.
People have, wrongly, assumed that everyone has to carry insurance and that this constitutes a tax by way of forced purchase. In fact it's the opposite. Everyone has to pay a tax, and may nix the tax by picking up insurance.
The government already pays for the shortfalls in medical coverage that Americans have. Hospitals, when bills come due for the uninsured, hit up Uncle Sam. They've been at this for years.
This tax pays for those shortfalls. The idea is that if you're insured, you are not part of the problem and thus don't need to contribute to this payment.
Secondarily, the law changes the way insurance is paid out (primarily that it cannot be denied based on pre-existing conditions, previously the insurance companies' biggest cash cow). It alleviates a bit of the pressure put on insurance companies by this policy by incentivizing the purchase of healthcare.
Not only will the exchanges make healthcare more affordable (because everyone will be able to compare prices side by side--this is simple economics and has been thoroughly demonstrated and borne out in test markets)--but it also makes it, in a backwards way, cheaper.
In short, this is simply a new tax (@ 1% of your income)--and buying insurance will earn for you a tax credit which alleviates that tax.
So lets say it costs you 1% of 40k or $400 for your yearly tax. If we divide that by 12 we end up with $33.33.
The idea, economically, is that you can either pay $33.33 a month
OR
You can purchase insurance for $170 a month.
BUT
Because the $33.33 a month is already gone one way or the other (as a tax or towards insurance) the insurance option really only has an opportunity cost of $136.67 a month. Like I said, in a backwards way it operates as a tax credit.
I think the big mistake that the administration made on this one is not having billed the thing as a tax to begin with, because that is what it is. 
