The states won their Supreme Court case. They do not have to abide by the law and add 50 million new people into their healthcare system, which would easily bankrupt a fair amount of them; nor can they be punished and lose their current gov Medicare funds, which Obamacare tried to steal from them via blackball extortion. So the 28 states that sued won, are already announcing no thanks, we can’t afford your bill and are not participating. Real soon, tens of millions of Obama voters in those states (half the country) will find out their “victory” is they have not obtained free healthcare, nor free insurance. All that has happened is they have been taxed by Obama...and if they don’t pay up their IRS refunds will be seized.
The individual mandate was tossed. If upheld and the bill allowed to stand, it would have been impossible to rescind. Obamacare passed using reconciliation. Now declared a tax, it only takes 51 votes using reconciliation to abolish the whole bill. Seeing as this single issue is what catapulted rep voters to the 2010 voting booth, (giving the dems the largest mid-term landslide in 78 years), this decision, combined with a lousy economy guarantees a blowout rep victory. Upon winning a rep majority senate, the bill will be repealed with 51+ votes early next year. All attempts to write a new one will be filibustered by dems. In the end, nothing changed other than a huge power shift in Washington, and the states will not go bankrupt via ballooning healthcare costs.
The losers? Tens of millions of working families will now lose their company healthcare. Avg healthcare cost is $12,800 per employee to companies. The Obamacare fine is $2,000 if you do not provide healthcare to employees. Countless companies in bad financial situations will use this opportunity to drop healthcare...for tens of millions of employees and their families. And for those families it will cost them far more the replace, without the company group rate. To these unfortunate Obamacare victims, they just had their take home pay cut by 25-35%, putting many in dire financial straits. In a short six months, people will realize the net result of this decision is fewer people now have healthcare, and Obama voters got taxed for nothing.
But they won't find that out, because I think you are right, it will be repealed before they ever see that tax. Which is kind of a shame, because I suspect that a lot of the people who supported this are exactly the same people that would have gotten taxed.
"Avg healthcare cost is $12,800 per employee to companies. The Obamacare fine is $2,000 if you do not provide healthcare to employees. Countless companies in bad financial situations will use this opportunity to drop healthcare...for tens of millions of employees and their families."
I don't follow that. If it costs $12,800 and the fine is $0 today, they have a greater incentive to drop now than before Obamacare.
The only difference is that after Obamacare, companies will know their employees can get group insurance through the government pool. THAT could be the catalyst to causes companies to drop insurance. But the fine actually increases over the next few years, to where it doesn't make sense for companies to drop the insurance at all, because in 4 years the fines will be more than the insurance.