If someone goes into the emergency room and can't pay for their service, the taxpayers pay the bill. So, by the analogy, the requirement should be to cover anything that the doctor must do because the cost could fall to the taxpayer.
Part of the argument in defense of the bill is that the mandate will save taxpayer money because the uninsured will now be forced to pay their own way. Yet despite this claim, I don't seen any provision for returning this savings to the taxpayer? Where is this supposed savings going? Either it is mythical or it's just going to be eaten up by the bureaucracy.
And also, if the person cannot afford their emergency room bill, they won't be able to afford the insurance either, and thus will get subsidized insurance. So one way or another, the taxpayer pays.
I see a few possibilities:
1) It reduces the amount of tax money spent on emergency room bills and therefore it gets spent on something of more widespread use.
2) Future taxes would be smaller as a result. Depending on the timing, this could result in a year of double counting for that money.
3) There will be a later provision for returning the money.
4) The bill is gigantic and maybe this issue hasn't made its way into the news (unless you've studied it in detail. I would suspect not because of its length...).
As for your second point, I'm not sure thats true, but I don't have any statistics off hand. It would be interesting to see some comprehensive statistics about how much tax money goes to paying for these things vs. how much money the person makes (adjusted for whatever you want to adjust for).
Part of the argument in defense of the bill is that the mandate will save taxpayer money because the uninsured will now be forced to pay their own way. Yet despite this claim, I don't seen any provision for returning this savings to the taxpayer? Where is this supposed savings going? Either it is mythical or it's just going to be eaten up by the bureaucracy.
And also, if the person cannot afford their emergency room bill, they won't be able to afford the insurance either, and thus will get subsidized insurance. So one way or another, the taxpayer pays.