HomoEconomus

In an interview today on ABC's "This Week," Hillary Clinton reiterated that she would garnish the wages of Americans who fail to enroll in her proposed mandatory health-care plan.

There's one problem with Sen. Clinton's policy: you can't garnish what isn't there.

The people whose wages would be garnished would necessarily come from the ranks of the uninsured. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's report on "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006" (see Table 6, p. 21), of the 47 million uninsured people in the U.S. (16% of the population):

• 22% didn't work at all;
• 30% had annual household income under $25,000;
• 62% earned less than $50,000;
• 80% earned less that $75,000.

These demographic figures help explain why the U.S. poverty rate (12%) is not too far from the rate of uninsured (16%). They also make clear that a policy of garnishing the wages of the uninsured would be a fruitless effort.

Moreover, such a policy could be viewed as unfair and discriminatory:

• Nearly half of the uninsured are black or hispanic;
• 20% are under 18;
• 36% are under 25 years old;
• 22% aren't U.S. citizens.

Finally, the Census Bureau's report gives some indication of what a government mandated health-insurance plan might cost. In 2006, Medicaid covered about 10% of the U.S. population, at a total cost to taxpayers of $300 billion. The demographics of the uninsured lead us to conclude that a government plan to cover that remaining 16% of the population will cost at least this much, if not more.

Much more. The arithmetic puts the figure closer to $450 billion, or $800 per month per uninsured person. That's a lot of non-existent wages to garnish. --GAHjr