Here's some information that should outrage you: The Internal Revenue Service is hiring hundreds, perhaps thousands, of agents to police us and make sure we all have health insurance under the so-called affordable health care law just upheld by a slim majority of the Supreme Court. That means in two-and-a-half years, you will be required to prove you have health insurance on your income tax form, or pay a penalty.
The good news is that Congress forgot to include enforcement in the law, which means the IRS cannot impose civil or criminal penalties on anyone who refuses to pay. And the IRS can't seize bank accounts or dock wages to collect it. No interest accumulates for the unpaid penalties.
This was a serious oversight by Congress. No wonder Nancy Pelosi said they had to pass the bill to find out what's in it. The law is 13,000 pages. I doubt anyone has read it all. Republicans have promised to repeal and replace it. We'll see.
I'm Cal Thomas in Washington.
Publication date: July 10, 2012
