OK, I'll take a shot at this, as I understand it. The new rule is that you have to A)have insurance OR B)pay the penalty tax.
So, if you meet condition "A" there is no tax (penalty) for you. Thus people with insurance, be it private, employer provided, or Medicare, TriCare or Medicaid will not pay the tax.
If you do not have health insurance you either have to get it, or pay the tax.
But what if I can't afford it, you ask?
Well they have tried to "help" with that by doing three things.
First they have expanded Medicaid so it covers more people. So maybe now you can get Medicaid. (Only, Roberts struck down the part of Obamacare that made the States agree to this, so many may choose not to add people to their Medicaid rolls.)
Also, Medicaid is weird. Your basic single, 40 year old, unemployed person doesn't qualify for Medicaid - you need some sparklie like dependent children. I don' think the law changes this, so there will still be some (fewer, but some) people who don't qualify for Medicaid despite being poor.
The second mechanism to help the uninsured is tax credits to buy insurance from one of the new pools. These are available to something like 200% of the poverty level, for anyone who qualifies based on income. (No special dependency required).
The third way the government "helps" some people is by having an exclusion for really poor people. They just don't have to buy insurance, and they are excluded from the tax. They get to still be poor and uninsured. Mostly one would think that true poor would qualify for Medicaid. But as explained, many don't.
But lets say you have a job, it doesn't pay real well but it pays enough that you aren't a welfare case. And at the end of the day, therefore, you can't get on Medicaid. And you certainly don't qualify for the dirt-poor exemption. And further suppose that even with the low-income credit you can't afford the insurance you are required to have. At that point you move to category "B". You owe the tax (penalty) for not being insured.
So when you say this: "Meanwhile, the suckers like us who still have private sector jobs, will be unable to afford private insurance on top of this new “tax.” You are slightly wrong. If you have insurance you won't have to pay the new tax (penalty). Of course you'll have to pay all the other new taxes that will be needed to do things like: expand medicaid to cover millions of new borderline poor, provide subsidies for the purchase of insurance to those in the category just above them, etc. But we don't know what those are yet, exactly.
Aren’t they planning to tax our employers and us for providing/having insurance? I believe that they are.
I should have, however, worded that differently. I will be unable to afford GOOD, private insurance, on top of whatever I have left from the employer/or when they drop me, DeathCare.
The elites will continue to have the world’s finest care, and continue to be able to afford whatever fees, taxes, etc. PLUS be enrolled in quality care. Those of us in the middle class, working for the private sector, will be given the death pill if we get sick.
Try flipping that around: everyone is subject to the ~$3000 tax, and may get a ~$3000 deduction for meeting certain qualified conditions (have insurance, are poor below a certain level, enjoy gov’t-favored religion status, etc.).
That way it looks a lot like most other standard tax deductions; the only novel/new bit is starting every income tax form at a $3000 liability instead of assuming $0.