Actually there is NO ENFORCEABLE MANDATE at all, it was purposely written in the bill that way.
If you go to the ACA website it links straight to this IRS website, under facts about the mandate.
http://www.irs.gov/Affordable-Care-...he-Individual-Shared-Responsibility-Provision
There are numerous exemptions number one and if you follow this all the way down to the very bottom to last sentence the IRS fully admits that they can do
NOTHING WHATSOEVER to get this money except to take the refund you might have coming, that is it. So no refund, no penalty plain and simple.
It is easy to manipulate your taxes totally legally in order to get very little or no refund.
So you are being given all the ways you can avoid buying your own insurance by the ACA and the IRS themselves so that the rest of us can pay for you when you get in over your head with $100,000++ medical bills, which BTW is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA.
The ACA has changed NOTHING except to make it possible for millions to get health care insurance when they never could before, make it cheaper for at least 60% of everybody, change nothing for about 38% and possibly slightly raise premiums for about 2% that had bad policies in the first place.
Everyone gets free preventive care paid for 100%, so all your Physicals, Mammograms, Flu Shots, Dental Checkups, everything that is preventative is paid for 100% not even a co pay.
That saves everybody usually several hundred dollars per year just that alone.
So in REALITY virtually everybody is in fact paying less either in premiums or in services now paid for.
Here is how the 'Mandate" is enforced, this I copied and pasted straight from the bill itself.
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"(g) Administration and Procedure-
‘(1) IN GENERAL- The penalty provided by this section shall be paid upon notice and demand by the Secretary, and except as provided in paragraph (2), shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.
(2) SPECIAL RULES- Notwithstanding any other provision of law—
‘(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES - *In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure* .
‘(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES - The Secretary shall NOT—
‘(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section , or
‘(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure .’""
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