JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail
Washington, Nov 6 -
Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.
In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”
Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:
“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]
“Criminal penalties
Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:
• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]
When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.
“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.
According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016. -- ###
Via republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov
Republican Ways and Means
Contact: Jim Billimoria or Sage Eastman (202) 226-4774
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Nancy Pelosi's H.R. 3962 contains the following provisions:
* Permits federal taxpayer funding of abortion services, above and beyond the status quo of current law.
* Provides for a "health care czar" called the Health Choices Commissioner, who could forcibly enroll individuals in government-run insurance and whose tasks include requiring random compliance audits on Americans' health benefits plans.
* Allows for "community organizations" like ACORN and Planned Parenthood to assist the Health Choices Commissioner in enrolling individuals in the Health Insurance Exchange.
Need more?
* Encourages identity fraud for illegal immigrants seeking to gain taxpayer-subsidized health benefits through inadequate citizenship and legal status verification standards. Page 255, Section 345 of H.R. 3962 includes language requiring verification of income for individuals wishing to receive federal health care subsidies, and while the bill currently does include a requirement for applicants to verify their citizenship, it does not include a similar requirement to verify that person's identity, a key component of effective verification.
* Provides for 13 new and different tax increases, including an employer mandate excise tax.
* "Grandfathers" out of existence individual health insurance coverage.
* Retains the "death panels" by providing for bureaucrats working for a new comparative effectiveness institute funded by a tax on health benefits. The institute could publish the protocols needed to deny patients access to life-saving treatments on cost grounds.
* Contains NO ban on federal promotion of assisted suicide and/or health care rationing of treatments.
* Facilitates leftist, social engineering policies such as rewriting current tax law to allow domestic partners to be treated as "spouses."
* Retains both the individual and employer mandates to purchase health insurance or else face a financial penalty, and compliance to this mandate will be enforced by the IRS.
* Imposes a 2.5% tax on an individual's modified adjusted gross income if they fail to purchase "acceptable" health care coverage.
* Imposes a surtax, starting in 2011, on "high"-income people - that is, couples with adjusted gross income over $1 million and individuals over $500,000.
* Fails to hold Members of Congress to the same health care system requirements that Americans will have to live by under the public health insurance option.
* Prohibits states from using tort reform to reduce health care costs.
* Mandates that all health insurance companies accept all applicants, that they cannot deny anyone for pre-existing conditions, and that they cannot increase the monthly premiums for less healthy, more costly consumers.
* Accommodates "whistleblower" provisions for trial lawyers to bring suit against employers.
* Slashes Medicare payments to providers by more than $400 billion.
* Creates dozens of new bureaucracies (111 to be exact) including the Health Benefits Advisory Committee and the Health Choices Administration.
* Encourages people to drop their insurance in favor of the public option as it provides for underpaying medical providers, who will in turn jack up their rates for those patients who have private insurance, driving more people to the cheaper, government plan.
* Authorizes Medicare to pay doctors for providing advice to patients on end-of-life care.
* Grants the authority to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
* Considers individuals to be treated as "children" up to the age of 26 for the purpose of remaining on their parents' insurance plan.
* Imposes an excise tax on medical devices.
* Cuts $170 billion from the Medicare Advantage program.
* Institutes $729.5 billion in job-killing tax increases on all Americans, fines those who can't afford to purchase government-forced insurance, and cripples businesses by taxing health benefits.
* If all of this weren't enough, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) even predicts that the public option's premiums will end up being quite high because it will attract less healthy people, who are more costly to the insurer. But, with a government-run plan, the government is the insurer, so higher cost projections for the government really means higher costs to American taxpayers. -- Chicago Daily Observer
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Big Government Health Care PSA
A parody PSA about Big Government and its plans to take over health care. A spoof of Will Ferrell's ad for MoveOn.org.
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The vote on H.R. 3962 is being cast today.
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Michelle Malkin is Liveblogging: The new Imperial Congress votes on Pelosicare
Liveblogging, Pt. 2: The hurry-up House debate on health care
C-Span has a live stream here if you’re not near a TV.11:08 p.m.: Dems erupt as only people who just got a lot closer to getting their hands on a good chunk of the U.S. economy can. “Free health care that costs well over a trillion dollars” passed, 220-215. One Republican, Anh Cao, voted yes.
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