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February 10, 2011

" Make people wear gold stars who refuse Obamacare" ~ Len Nichols Health Economist Teaches at Virginia's George Mason University

Obama Care Advocate, advocates making people wear gold stars who refuse Obamacare

NPR

Alternatives To Mandating Insurance? Maybe

"The biggest fear is that without mandatory health insurance, there will be no incentive for people to buy health insurance until after they're sick, and then the system won't work," says Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group that supports the law but opposes mandatory health insurance. "I would take issue with that."

Paul Starr, a health care expert and professor at Princeton University.

Starr has suggested giving people who don't want coverage a chance to opt out. But if they choose to remain uninsured, he says, "you won't be eligible to opt back in and get any of the benefit of the subsidies or use new health insurance exchanges or buy without pre-existing conditions exclusions."

In effect, he says, "you are basically opting into the world we have now" — for five years.

Yet some analysts worry that still might not get enough healthy people to sign up compared with an actual mandate.

Len Nichols, a health economist who teaches at Virginia's George Mason University, says without a requirement for coverage, Congress might have to find another way to make the consequences of not having insurance even more dramatic.

For example, he says, perhaps if people don't buy insurance when it is first available, "if you ever try to buy insurance again, you'll have to pay three times the market price, and we will put a gold sticker on your forehead and say to all hospitals, 'You do not have to treat this person; this person has forfeited their right to uncompensated care.' "

Nichols is only half serious about that gold star.

He is quick to point out that doctors and hospitals are bound by professional standards not to turn away patients in need of emergency care. So he says Congress may want to consider another option: Make the states do the hard work. Lawmakers could withhold federal funding in the health law unless states require people to have health insurance.

"It would have the virtue of avoiding the constitutional debate," he says.

Wild Thing's comment.......

And what do the waivers wear???

Holocaust redux. Obviously this person is not a history buff. The irony is amazing.

Good grief, free health care sure is expensive. Hey idiot, it is not about care. It’s about contro

Next, serial numbers tattooed into the hands of republican/conservative voters, so we can be put in the correct Involuntary Retraining Facility.

Len Nichols, Director, Health Policy Research & Ethics Center, College of Health & Human Services. His email address.....

lnichol9@gmu.edu

uh huh, guess he forgot part of the job description.

Our universities are cesspools, and they’ve got a good jump in turning our K-12 schools into the same thing.

Posted by Wild Thing at February 10, 2011 05:55 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Mark at February 10, 2011 08:17 AM

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Posted by: TomR, armed in Texas at February 10, 2011 10:12 AM

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Posted by: Eddie (Enemy of the State) at February 10, 2011 10:36 AM

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Posted by: gator at February 10, 2011 11:10 AM

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Posted by: BobF at February 10, 2011 12:34 PM

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Posted by: Wild Thing at February 11, 2011 04:11 AM

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