Posted on 07/01/2011 6:58:03 AM PDT by justlittleoleme
The glitch mainly affects older adults who are too young for a Medicare card but have reached 62, when people can qualify for early retirement from Social Security.
(snip)
To see how the Social Security wrinkle would work, consider a hypothetical example of two neighbors on the same block.
They are both 62 and have the same income of $39,500 a year. But one gets all his income from working, while the other gets $20,000 from part-time work and $19,500 from Social Security.
Neither of them gets health insurance on the job. Instead, they purchase it individually.
Starting in 2014, they would get their coverage through a new online health insurance market called an exchange. Millions of people in the exchanges would get federal tax credits to make their premiums more affordable. Less-healthy consumers could not be charged more because of their medical problems.
The neighbor who is getting Social Security would pay an estimated $206 a month in premiums.
Half of his income from Social Security, or $9,750, would not be counted in figuring his federal health insurance tax credit. On paper, he would look poorer. So he would get a bigger tax credit to offset his premiums.
But the neighbor who makes all his income from work would not be able to deduct any of it. He would pay $313 for health insurance, or about 50 percent more.
The estimates were produced using an online calculator from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
The disparities appear to be even greater for married couples and families in which at least one member is getting Social Security. With a bigger household, both the cost of coverage and the federal subsidies involved are considerably larger.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted2.ap.org ...
They knew what was in it. You are penalized to work in many areas.
College is one area. If your parents work, you are penalized on loans.
Public schools are another area. If your parents work, you pay a hefty fee each year in supplies and enrollment costs, not to mention you don’t get free lunch.
This is problematic, because the two largest ethnic groups (African Americans and Latinos) have learned it is better to NOT be married on paper. You can get all sorts of freebies from Uncle Sam.
Also, they can double dip on food programs, with both parents applying for them, so long as they are not married. In some states that is not allowed, so they stay separated, and the non-working parent applies for all the goodies, with no verifiable income.
Of course this health-care fiasco would be the same. You work, you get screwed. Unless it is a cash operation.
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