Does anyone remember, during the time when the Democrat controlled House and Senate were looking to pass Obamacare, if the notion that the legislation made any determination as to what forms of payment would be required to purchase health insurance was mentioned? Yeah, me neither
(NJ.com) The U.S.Department of Health and Human Services last week proposed a new rule that would require issuers of health insurance plans to accept different types of payments so that individuals without a bank account will still be able to purchase health insurance once the Affordable Care Act takes effect in January.
The proposed rule would require insurers to accept things like cashier’s checks, money orders and prepaid debit cards.
This is based on the issue that approximately 27% of uninsured Americans (a ton of which are illegal aliens and non-citizens) do not have checking accounts, which I suppose leads into these people getting their federal tax credits or something. The article doesn’t say, nor does that “proposed rule” (BTW, that document, which covers several different topics, is another 253 pages of rule-making), what the big bruhaha about this is.
The federal government’s report comes less than one month after Parsippany-based tax firm Jackson- Hewitt released its own report entitled “Uninsured + Unbanked = Unenrolled: How Health Insurance Companies Could Exclude One in Four Eligible Americans from ACA Health Coverage and What the Federal Government Can Do to Stop It,”
What that article alludes to, as does Clark Howard, is the notion that insurance companies typically require consumers to pay their monthly premiums through a checking account. Why? For one thing, they’d like guaranteed payment. However, I’m sure they’d take cashier’s checks and money orders, which are as good as cash. The Jackson-Hewitt article also calls this “discriminatory” towards Blacks and Hispanics, ie, raaaaacist.
That all said, one has to love the notion that the federal government, in this case Health and Human Services, can dictate what forms of payment private companies must take. Doesn’t seem like Liberals are interested in allow some entities to make their own “choice”, eh?
But, where did this power come from? It certainly wasn’t in the 2000+ page Obamacare legislation specifically, nor even in a roundabout manner. It comes from the huge amount of mentions along the lines of “the director of HHS shall (may, can)”, giving the director of HHS the power to make it up as she goes along. Even forcing private businesses to take forms of payment they’d rather not.
But, then, this is the same HHS will force religious organizations to violate their consciences and violates the 1st Amendment regarding the religious clause.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
This is actually a good thing! Many people will be participating in the cash economy, to do everything that they can to hide money from the Infernal Revenue Service.
And, of course, banks would just love it if ObaminableCare required everybody to have a checking account: that means more fees for the banks to hold your money for you.
Hmm, so what you’re saying is that this could be a way of paying back all the banks and bankers, financial institutions, etc that donated to Obama 2012?
One thing is all this that people are missing is that from day one, Obama pushed for electronic medical records. Why? As it turns out, all medical records have to go to a third party server. Once that happens, then your records are the property of the third party (that is why the NSA is able to do what it is doing). The 4th amendment does not apply here and you have no expectation of privacy, even though privacy laws are in place, they can be subverted.
So what is happening is that your most intimate thoughts and problems are now the property of someone else and the government can get them without problem.
That is a very interesting and good point.