Taranto on the Ways Obama Care Harms People

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From the article:

That's an excellent point, but it falls short of capturing the perversity of the Sebelius decree. To understand (the perversity of the Sebelius decree), begin with the observation that the distinction between being and not being able to "afford a plan" is a fuzzy one. Some lack insurance because they are so poor that they could not possibly pay the premiums, but it makes more sense to consider the decision to carry insurance or not as the product of each person's subjective evaluation of costs, benefits and risks. A person who forgoes insurance does so because, in his circumstances, he does not think it worth the money.

That analysis excludes those who, in the pre-ObamaCare regime, would have purchased insurance but couldn't because pre-existing conditions made them uninsurable. But for those who are insurable but choose to go without insurance, the injury of ObamaCare consists entirely in the new tax the law imposes upon them beginning this year.

Those who had policies canceled, however, were injured in a different way by ObamaCare. For them, insurance, at least as it existed before ObamaCare, was worth the cost. They fell victim to Obama's fraudulent claim that "if you like your plan, you can keep it." If they are now unable to find a plan worth buying, their primary injury consists in being deprived of insurance. The new exemption spares them only of the lesser injury--one might call it an insult--of being taxed for being a victim of ObamaCare.

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That the Sundbys' broker, a seasoned insurance professional, was unaware of all this more than a month after the ObamaCare exchanges opened for business (and more than 3½ years after the law was enacted) suggests yet another serious systemic problem with ObamaCare: The government appears to have done a woefully inadequate job of educating even professionals in the field, much less ordinary consumers, about the law's complicated and often destructive provisions. And this is in California, the state ObamaCare apologists have touted as the great success story.

Source: James Taranto, "The Perverse Exemption: Political Palliatives Won't Cure ObamaCare's Ills," The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2014