Posted on 11/06/2016 8:48:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Guy has written extensively on the policy trainwreck that is the Affordable Care Act. It is a complete nightmare, with double-digit premium spikes about to hit the nation (on average) next year. That’s a Tomahawk missile strike to most home budgets, especially those in America’s middle class. An ironic twist since Obamacare was supposed to help this economic demographic, which now finds itself being more squeezed by this law. Even CNN Money noted that Obamacare is turning into another government program that helps predominantly lower income Americans. Simply put, the law isn’t affordable. Republicans have known this. Minnesota Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton admitted this. If you’re able to qualify for a subsidy,
…[F]or many middle class Americans -- a single person earning more than $47,520 or a family of four with an income of $97,200 -- the pricey premiums and deductibles mean health care coverage remains out of reach.
"The middle class are getting squeezed," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "They aren't getting subsidies and these deductibles are hard to afford."
This schism is turning Obamacare into another government benefit program for lower- and moderate-income Americans. The typical enrollee has an income of only 165% of the federal poverty level, or $40,000 for a family of four.
[…]
For the 10.5 million enrollees on the Obamamcare exchanges, health insurance costs are more transparent. And more of the burden falls on the consumers. That is leaving an untold number of Americans opting to remain uninsured, rather than shell out thousands a year for premiums and deductibles. In 2015, 46% of uninsured adults said that they tried to get coverage but did not because it was too expensive, a Kaiser study found.
The big price spikes for 2017 have some current Obamacare enrollees wondering whether they'll renew their plans next year or opt to pay the penalty of $695 per person, or 2.5% of income, whichever is larger.
Take Irene Solesky of Towson, Maryland. A mortgage underwriter, Solesky and her husband earn too much to receive a subsidy. So next year, they will have to pay $1,351 a month for a CareFirst Bronze plan for themselves and their two sons. On top of that, they face a $13,100 family deductible.
"It's a catastrophic policy as far as I'm concerned," said Solesky, 55, noting her Obamacare policy costs twice as much as her mortgage. "Medical insurance was meant to keep medical expenses from driving you in financial ruin, not for the medical insurance to drive you in financial ruin."
And yes, more Americans have been opting to pay the penalty because it’s a more economical option. The Obama White House has taken a more vicious reaction to the news that their policy has totally failed. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest simply said that people could avoid paying the penalties if they sign up for their unaffordable health care program. Yeah, thanks for the advice, kid genius. President Obama has resorted to just straight up lying, saying that the premium hikes will only impact a handful of people, and that everything the GOP has predicted about Obamacare hasn’t come true. Uh, yeah it has, Barry.
But have no fear, folks—Hillary Clinton will fix the law. If you actually believe that, please seek medical assistances, preferably a cat scan, immediately. Obamacare is failing, it’s unaffordable, it’s yet another economic force that’s killing the middle class, and more Americans might opt out of it. As for young people, dependent coverage was extended to 26 years of age, so why would they voluntarily go off their parents’ plan, where they’re already insured, to sign up for Obamacare on their own and get slammed with increasingly rising premiums? Also, young people don’t go to the hospital as much, so they feel they don’t need health insurance. This seems to be a big part of making the law for lack of a better term work, though the Obama administration seems to have overlooked this part, but that could be said for most of their policies over the past eight years, especially the ones we've enacted overseas.
If you end up paying the penalty, you’re not doing your taxes right.
What do you think this is going to do to the price of a home?
You heard it here first, folks ... the strongest pressure to repeal ObamaCare is going to come from other industries who are going to start losing customers who can't afford to buy big-ticket items due to this enormous financial anchor chained around their necks.
I suspect most people with a household income of $40,000 aren’t paying for tax accounting help.
As designed.
As planned - they need to destroy the middle class in order to complete the subjugation of the People.
He says that like it's an accident, rather than a deliberate plan to make the middle class beg for single-payer.
Yep - even though we have insurance (TriCare and TriCare for Life), I keep tweaking what comes out of our pay to try to get to the point where I owe a small amount at the end of the year so if things ever change for us I'll not have to worry about them illegally stealing part of a "refund" due to us.
What about what it has done for jobs? Companies like Home depot, Modells, Walmart etc etc only hire part time so they don’t have to pay into it and if you are self employed you can’t afford it. To call it a disaster is an insult to disasters and if you think this is bad, Hillary wants to go to single payer while we are $20 trillion in debt basically bankrupting the country. So not only will there be NO jobs, there will be NO healthcare as well because there will be no money to pay for it. There will be countless more homeless, crime will skyrocket unapposed because there will be no money for cops, it literally will be the end of the country if she wins. ISIS, Al Qaeda only WISH they could do the kind of damage Democrats have done to the USA.
We are reeling from the price for bare minimum catastrophic coverage for my wife and I. It went from 14,400 to 24,000 a year just this year. We can’t afford the additional 10,000 without giving up a lot of our budget to do it. We are over the threshold for a subsidy but not by much. It behooves us to adjust our income and become lower level producers. This isn’t much of an IQ test for us.
We are giving up the standard of living we have worked for most of our lives to pay for others to have a better standard of living than they have earned or even deserve.
If that is not communism I want to know what is.
We still have a middle class?
Don’t pay your electric bill - keep your termination notice. Penalty avoided.
All you have to do is make sure you underpay your taxes so you owe them every year. They have no recourse. There is nothing that gives them the right to ding you in any way other than to hold back money that the government would owe you.
In our case, it’s even easier. Because it is so absurdly expensive for us 62 year olds, we just make sure we keep our “taxable” income low enough so the 8% rule exemption kicks in. :-)
The reason for this is that California isn't seeking permission to use taxpayer funds to cover health care costs for illegal aliens; they've been doing that for decades anyway. What California wants to do is let illegal aliens BUY ObamaCare insurance -- which tells me that the California insurance pools will be insolvent without financial support from "customers" who have no legal right to be here.
Folks -- this is where the collapse begins.
What would happen if you drop the insurance entirely?
I know, but the U.S. government relies on people to keep themselves in such a state of financial ignorance that they never adjust their withholdings at all. There are more than enough people in this category who keep the thing going.
Can’t get anything past these guys at CNN. /sarc off
Pay a penalty for nothing? It goes against my grain.
Earn 24,000 a year and pay it out for insurance?
Earn a few thousand less a year and pay nothing for insurance and work less.
Let’s see which one do I net out more on after taxes?
Good strategy. LOL.
That’s not a bug — it’s a feature. The whole POINT of Obamacare was to impoverish the middle class in order to benefit Obama’s various constituencies — gays who need AIDS drugs, illegal aliens, etc.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.