[ctdonath]

Non-sequitur.

That others got other contracts is not relevant to the point that this contractor got this $60M contract without a bidding process when there was no reason to not solicit bids from others.

(As others note, seems it was a lot more than $60M.)

[somebehemoth]

Given that the title of the article that started this discussion is, "We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404". I'd say it is fair to point out that actual cost was ten times less than is claimed in the article. I agree that no-bid contracts are bad, but they certainly are not unprecedented. I guess I am just not getting the outrage other people seem to have here. Maybe because I am not against ACA?

[ctdonath]

I guess I am just not getting the outrage other people seem to have here.

"Buy my product or I'll charge you $3000" provokes ire, as does a subsequent "oh BTW, the website key to buying my product sucks, but that won't persuade me to delay enforcing the $3000 even though I've given all my buddies such wavers."

Such gun-to-the-head tactics tends to elicit verbose nit-picking. Not hard to understand, even if you don't share the consternation.

[somebehemoth]

It is very questionable whether a tax penalty is equivalent to "gun-to-the-head tactics". Speaking of a tax penalty: where did you get $3000 from?

"The fee in 2014 is 1% of your yearly income or $95 per person for the year, whichever is higher. The fee increases every year. In 2016 it is 2.5% of income or $695 per person, whichever is higher." - from https://www.healthcare.gov/what-if-someone-doesnt-have-healt...

Someone making $300,000 per year might pay $3k in 2014. I'm failing to have empathy for this kind of person who refuses to have health insurance. Poorer people pay way less of a penalty and are entitled to subsidies that make refusal of coverage much less fiscally logical.

The outrage still makes little sense to me unless you ignore many relevant facts.

[ctdonath]

Even if it's just $95, the point is the same: if you don't buy this product, you are fined and the police power of the state can be brought down upon your head if you don't pay up. Endless stories abound of people losing homes, savings frozen/confiscated, incarcerated, etc. over non-payment of seemingly trifling amounts. Heck, the whole Branch Davidian incident (50+ day standoff, dozens shot or burned to death) boiled down to alleged (!) non-payment of a $200 tax.

And it's not that a person doesn't have health insurance (though some truly don't need it, being sufficiently wealthy), it's that one is penalized for not having a particular kind of health insurance. Some of us are quite content to pay our way cash, insuring only for catastrophic events...but, for some reason, our legislators deem that punishable, requiring us to sign up for undesirable services at outrageous costs via a grossly dysfunctional website.

This nation was created in opposition to such taxation & penalties, hence a lot of citizens stressing out despite "it's just a little fine, so pay & be done with it." A government which threatens[1] severe consequences for non-compliance with "trivial" regulations should not be surprised by severe pushback from those not inclined to comply.

[1] - for all the "we won't garnish your wages etc." verbiage on the website in question, I'm not seeing any legal basis for anything other than IRS-standard severe consequences for non-payment of penalties.

[GVIrish]

Well, if someone doesn't want to pay for health insurance they should either have to pay out of pocket when they have to go to the emergency room, or not receive medical attention at all.

Since we've collectively made the choice to not turn away people who show up to the emergency room, here we are. I'd be all for axing the individual mandate if we decided to shut people out of the emergency room.

On balance, it seems far more humane to go with the individual mandate and penalties than it does to let poor people die on hospital door steps. Although it is possible that after people realize a ignominious death awaits them if they don't buy health insurance, maybe everyone will be scared into buying it.

[hga]

According to the law, HHS can't garnish your wages etc. As far as I know, it's silent on the IRS doing that ... which of course is the organization tasked with collecting those fines.

Little else to add, except that we might remember how the drafters of the 16th Amendment, which authorized the Federal income tax, decided not to cap it at 10%, fearing that would be a ceiling soon reached.