Health care law’s mandate unlikely to affect many people

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/29/154483/health-care-laws-mandate-unlikely.html#storylink=omni_popular

Posted on Friday, June 29, 2012

By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Despite all the spin and punditry about the national health care law’s mandate that Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty, the vast majority wouldn’t be forced to buy anything or pay any penalty.

A recent study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research center that focuses on economic and social policy, found that if the law had been fully implemented last year, 93 percent of the population under age 65 wouldn’t have faced a penalty or had to buy insurance under the mandate.

In fact, only 6 percent of Americans, about 18 million people, would have to “newly purchase” insurance under the law, the study found. And of this group, roughly 11 million would be eligible for subsidies to help buy their coverage from new insurance marketplaces, or “exchanges,” created by the law.

The remaining 7 million, about 2 percent of the total population and 3 percent of all Americans under age 65, wouldn’t receive any financial help and could face penalties for lacking coverage, said Linda Blumberg, a health economist and senior fellow in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center.

[Igel]

1. So "7 million" is now "not many".

And "affect" means "forced to buy (de novo) or pay the penalty."

That can only mean that if it causes my employer to change plans or drop the plan since I'm already insured it doesn't affect me, even if it takes time and effort to get re-insured, and if my new insurance has a different cost. There might be an increase in cost. There might be a decrease it costs. But it's now defined as a non-effect on me.

Are the young people already added because of the ACA affected by the ACA? Apparently not. Again, a million or more non-affected people who've been touched, for good or for bad, by the law.

Seems that the word "affect," like the word "many," has changed its meaning to what's precisely needed to prove the point.

I'd point out that a few days ago there was a outcry-spike because of the horrendously large hordes of homeless children attending school. The number was untenable, huge, enormous, and was slightly over 1/7 of "not many." So that "too many" is now much smaller than "not many". If that trend continues, by August we'll be saying that "none" is infinitely larger than "all".

But since we don't care about 2-3% of the population because, well, that number of people is just intrinsically not worth caring about, I'd point out that self-report surveys over the last 40-50 years have consistently come back saying that about 2% of the US adult population self-identifies as homosexual.