Obamacare Provides $7,200 'Divorce Incentive,' $11,000 for Older Couples

cnsnews.com ^ | September 26, 2013 | Hans Bader

[grundle]

On the Obamacare health insurance exchanges, being married can cost you a lot.

Get divorced (or avoid getting married, if you live together), and you save $7,230 per year if you are a fairly typical 40-year-old couple with kids (example: the husband working full-time, and the wife working part time, with the husband making $70,000, and the wife making $23,000).

If you are a 60-year-old couple with equal incomes and no kids, and you make $62,041 a year, you save $11,028 a year by getting divorced or remaining unmarried. These are the amounts of money you will lose if you get married, since you will lose this amount of taxpayer subsidies due to Obamacare's discriminatory treatment of married versus unmarried couples. That's the reality confirmed by an Obamacare "calculator" provided by the pro-Obamacare Kaiser Family Foundation showing how Obamacare's "tax credits" work.

This calculator is not designed to make Obamacare look bad: Indeed, it has been touted by Obama's own proxies at BarackObama.com, known as Organizing for Action: "In a September 13 email, Erin Hannigan of Organizing for Action's 'Truth Team' bragged about" this "cool calculator" showing how Obamacare's "tax credits" work, and encouraged everyone to "share it on Facebook or Twitter."

[Flycatcher]

couldn’t a married couple just file their taxes separate?

I'd like to know the answer to that too.

Anyone out there know?

[nascarnation]

IRS hired 15,000 attorneys and accountants for ACA.
Ring them up and ask.

[Oldexpat]

The couple might also consider moving to a location where the health quote is cheaper if their profession is portable. This might encourage more migration from high cost, high tax states to lower tax states.
Some counties have much higher insurance rates.

[poindexters brother]

The calculator linked to in the article does not yield the results noted in the article. There is no place even to enter the age of the insured parties so I can’t see how he can make the claims he’s making about 40 year olds and 60 year olds.

I dislike Obamacare, but we make our case better with truthful claims that are verifiable than with claims that are not verifiable or worse, false. Perhaps they’ve changed the calculator since the article was published in late September.

[rey]

There is also some weird deal in the bill that can raise your child support payments automatically to something like 50-75% of your income. So divorced with children may not work like this article says.

[Angry_White_Man_Syndrome]

I have thought it is time for Conservatives to go ‘Galt’ on marriage. If you consider your marriage to be a bond under Christ, what the state considers you does not matter. All married couples should get divorced in the eyes of the state. This will change nothing in the eyes of God. If enough couples did this it would eliminate the power that the state has over your marriage. It would also distroy the socalist plans.

Take my wife and me for example. We have four kids and she is a stay at home mom. Currently I pay taxes and we get little to know state benefits. We go to the courthouse and file a non-contested divorce. Beside the piece of paper nothing changes. I would give her just enough of my pay that she still qualifies for food stamps, and welfare as an unemployed single mother. My tax rate would be lower because a good portion of my income would be going to alimony and child support. However, I would still claim all 4 kids as tax deductions. So, I would only lose a couple thousand dollars of tax deductions. Our effective tax rate would be a lot lower and we would have the extra income from the state. We would no longer be feeding the beast but draining it.

Enough people did this it would collapse the system.

[MinuteGal]

Here in Florida there's countless retired older couples living together without benefit of marriage. Mostly widows and widowers in late marriages who have lived this way for years and are as happy as clams. The reason has always been mostly for inheritance purposes....his family/her family, fewer inheritance legal problems and unhappy heirs.

Now it looks like a new reason (ObamaCare) may hasten this form of unlicensed connubial bliss, or hasten calculated divorces. To middle-class married retirees, something like $11,000 or $15,000 insurance premiums every 12 months is a budget breaker, a life-changer...and a quick road to the poor house.

If Obama and his Merry Marxmen have their way, more radical/negative changes in what we perceive "marriage" to be will embedded in our society.

Leni

[laotzu]

Why does obama not want gays who are married to get benefits?

Why does Obama force gays to pay for maternity leave, pediatric dentistry, and a bunch of other crap they will never use?

Stop hatin' on the gays, Obama!