Making Chicken Salad Out of Chicken S%$#

While the Affordable Care Act increases premiums for young healthy adults, forces people out of the health insurance plans they liked, prevents them from continuing to see the doctors they want to see, drives up the cost of health care, causes employers to cut workers' hours and hastens the bankruptcy of the country, there are a few good things that might actually come out of this new law.  It could become one of the best crime-fighting tools government has ever had.

By making the Internal Revenue Service the enforcement agency for the individual mandate--rather than the toothless Health and Human Services--ObamaCare will provide Government with a great new way to track down all kinds of people currently evading the law.

First off, because you must apply to receive the federal tax credit to subsidize your health insurance premiums, the IRS should be able to quickly track down the 7-MILLION Americans who fail to file federal tax returns every year.  No tax return--no federal credit--and for people desperate for health insurance coverage, that must surely outweigh the punishment of back taxes and fines, right?

The IRS filings should also help local police from around the country to track down the more than one-million people with outstanding warrants for their arrests.  Most are for probation and parole violations and unpaid traffic citations--but there are still plenty of dangerous criminals who have either eluded arrest or have jumped bail and can now be brought to justice.  It should be very simple to compare the lists of ObamaCare enrollees with the lists of outstanding warrants and conduct sweeps to pick them up.

And the enforcement of the individual mandate will also reveal the locations of millions of parents who are delinquent in their child support payments.  Only about 40% of parental support cases are paid in full every month.  Armed with the ObamaCare lists, Family Services departments in all 50-states can locate those deadbeat parents and get them to start paying up.  Liens and garnishments can also be placed against them through the employer that they list with their IRS filings.

Of course, this use of the Affordable Care Act to bring millions of scofflaws and deadbeats to justice relies on the belief that those who have gone out of their ways to avoid government interaction for years are suddenly going to be "scared" into revealing their locations to avoid a "penalty" of $95 next year--which, by the way, no one has explained yet how the IRS is going to collect from people whom they either don't know exist--or haven't been able to locate for years.  All of which means millions of people desperate for health insurance will remain uncovered--strictly by choice or necessity.