Congress Couldn’t Empty a Boot With Instructions on the Heel

Take something simple. Then ask yourself how you could a way to make it difficult. If you can do this then you too may be qualified to be a member of Congress.

Need an example, then consider the Health Care Reform bill’s provision to require everyone to purchase health insurance. Certainly the intent would seem very simple. If you are an American citizen then you must buy at least a “basic” health care insurance plan (or have one provided by your employer, or be covered by someone else plan – like spouse’s or parent’s). And if you cannot afford even a basic plan, the Government will provide some subsidized packages so that your costs are less burdensome. Of course even here there will be people who fall through the cracks. It’s not that Congress is unaware of the cracks, it’s just that their definition of ‘everyone’ is not, you know, everyone.

So setting that minor point, the Health Care Reform bill is still nearly simple on this item. We can say that the new act will require “the vast majority of” citizens to pay for some health care plan coverage. We could say that Congress has managed to be generally simple on this area; but I don’t mean that in the good way.

But we are not done yet. This requirement that everyone (the sorta kind) have insurance presents an enforcement issue. To have any meaning, Congress realized (I know, it’s unusual that Congress is aware of a connection between their laws and paying for them; but someone screwed up and pointed it out) that there had to be some way to insure that people would actually purchase insurance. Otherwise Congress would have done it usual legislative abracadabra and produced yet another “here’s your next new law”; and could somebody please figure out how to implement it.

However, do not despair. Congress has stepped up to the task and is prepared to decree that they will guarantee enforcement by, now don’t hold your breath, imposing a “fine” on anyone who does not comply with the law. You may think that this sound simple, and let’s get the sense in which you versus I mean simple before we agree. If you mean this is a very simple way to compel people to purchase their insurance, then we do not agree. If you mean that Congress is being simple-minded again, then we do agree.

Creating a ‘fine-based’ motivational arrangement is not simple. It will require adding a responsibility to one or more (more is more likely) Governmental entity to come up with methods and procedures to find people who are not purchasing their insurance. And to make matters worse, these agencies will have to determine that someone is not providing the required coverage not only to themselves, but more difficultly that they are not providing it to their family members. This of course will require additional funding to such Governmental agencies, which will have to be borne by the tax payers. All this will be done of course to make health care less expensive. This is because spending money on things that do not directly fund actual health care activities always makes health care less expensive.

Now there are simple ways to make people actively seek out and purchase their health care insurance. And while we might expect the average American to be prudent enough to recommend one of these approaches; it is out of character for Congress to do something smart. One example of a simpler way to get people to pay for health insurance coverage is to make the purchase of health care insurance a tax deductable item. This approach incorporates both a carrot and stick mechanism within the existing reporting system that Americans engage in every year. By crafting the tax-deduction procedure properly, the Government would be able to make the current tax system directly support the self-same funding requirement that their fine-based approach would attempt to achieve.

If I expect nothing else from Congress, I expect that they do simple things simply; and not do stupidly simple things.