I'm just writing this to discuss my own personal perspective. Yours might or might not be different. I am very disappointed with the Supreme Court's ruling today with regard to the ObamaCare Plan. This information is based upon my own research and while I have not read the entire Health Care Act, I have read many of the key sections of it. Specifically as they relate to the tax and tax law enforcement of the bill.
Almost none of us are getting anything for free here. We are all going to have to pay, and now because it's a requirement, we will all have to pay even more, because like the states that require vehicle insurance, you can bet all the of premiums will rise. Partly because the insurance companies know the coverage is mandatory. But also, partly because now that more high-risk individuals are required to be covered, and limitations of coverage are removed the premiums across the board for the entire pool will have to go up to reflect that.
There are some very poor, who are at less than 150% of the US Poverty level who will be entitled to the State Medicare Coverage for free. Honestly I believe those people do need that assistance. The tables for the poverty level is here:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12pove… To make the math easy for you, if you are single and currently earn less than $16,755 a year, you will be entitled to the FREE coverage. If you are a family of three you are entitled for FREE coverage for the entire family so long as you don't earn more than $28,635 per year. If you earn more than these levels, even just $5 more, our government believes you can afford insurance on your own and that you now have to buy it.
So what does insurance cost? Well if you are like me you are going to go online, and get on the phone and start calling to find out because while the rate tables are similar based upon certain factors (age, gender, tobacco use, etc) there are many plans available and monthly premiums are reflected in that. For me the least expensive Cigna plan per month is $227.00. The most expensive is $500 per month. That's for me alone. So that equals $2,724 a year, that I will now be required to spend, weather I'm healthy or not. And regardless of if I use it.
The way this law becomes a tax and what I understood from the beginning is the way individuals will be penalized if we do not take part in the insurance coverage. It hasn't been decided yet what the exact rate of the penalty will be but it is proposed between 2 and 9.5 % of your income. So if we just pick a number in the middle, say 6%, If I opt not to pay $2,724 a year for insurance, then the IRS will collect an additional tax from me of $1,800.00. That's only if the rate falls basically in the middle of the range projected. At the very top end of the range my Health Care Tax will be $2,850.00. And I can assure you it's more likely to come in at the top of that bracket....and because history proves, it will only go up.
Just in case any of you are curious, I also ran projected numbers based upon my family. Coverage for Richard and I and one child 15 years old. The cheap rate family plan is $569.00 per month, with the most expensive policy at $1,252.00 per month. In a year that means our family's health insurance coverage will cost us between $6,828.00 and $15,024.00. The fact is that currently we cannot afford that. We are struggling and living basically on only one income. We aren't alone, I know many of you are too. And now this new requirement will only make things worse.
But there are some people who this change will not impact as badly. Because I do believe everyone want's to have Health Insurance coverage, if they can afford it. In fact six years ago, when my income was double what it is now, I did have coverage on that very same Cigna plan and voluntarily paid for it myself. Not that I got much benefit from it other than a standard annual examination and inexpensive co-pays for prescriptions. I would say that most families making more than $80,000 per year will already have coverage, and it's likely they already pay for it. And those premiums will go up between now and 2015 but the higher income families will likely get thru this again, just paying a little more than they already do voluntarily anyway.
Because you all do understand that for most employers that when they offer health insurance as a benefit, that the company doesn't generally cover the full cost. The employee has whatever the balance of that monthly premium is withheld from their paycheck before they even receive it. So all things being equal, when the new calculations go into effect from the Insurance companies, everyone who is currently on an Employer-Sponsored plan will see an increase in their percentage and therefore a cut in take home pay.
Then we have the next bracket of employers who don't have plans in place. Now they will have to offer a plan of some sort to their employees. I'd like to believe a few will be generous and offer very competitive plans to their workers. But the fact is that if the company can't afford Health Insurance as a benefit now, it's likely when they are required to offer it the employee will find it's the least coverage at the highest cost and the employer will only cover the bare minimum of the premium. The rest will be deducted from your wages and you won't have a choice. If your employer offers you a plan you don't even have the advantage of someone who is self-employed like me that I get to pick, you will be limited to whatever the employer offers. Many of those employers will likely have to cut a few employees, or freeze wages at the least and the employees will have no choice in the matter.
Other employers will be able to avoid the rules by keeping a mostly part-time workforce. That's how huge companies like McDonalds and WalMart stay in compliance with this type of legislation. If the rule is that all employees who work more than 24 hours a week must be covered, you can bet the new schedules will have all employees working 22 to 23 hours. Cheaper to hire one new employee to make up those hours, still at minimum wage than to have to pay the health benefits out. The result to the job market will then be even more people earning even less. But here's the thing, lets say you are working at Walmart for 23 hours a week. Then you are certainly welcome to get a second part-time job that still won't be required to offer you insurance. Now the beauty is that even if you are lucky enough to land two or three part-time jobs at the now current minimum wage and work 40 hours a week, your income is below the 150% of poverty level. So lucky you...you get to have the FREE medicare coverage. However, you better never work more than 40 hours a week and don't earn more than $8.05 an hour because at that point you cross the threshold and now have to pay for the coverage yourself.
Finally, a note about the FREE state Medicare coverage. I have direct experience in this area and yeah you will qualify for the coverage based upon your low income level, and probably because medically you will have a need for certain treatment. But you know what? The requirement is only going to be for the barest minimum of coverage. People on these plans won't be able to elect a treatment that hasn't been pre-approved. It's entirely likely that barring near-death situations, you will be placed on a waiting list six pages long and even four years later not have received the treatment that your state-appointed doctors agreed you need. This won't likely be run-of-the-mill treatments, like annual exams or immunizations. It will be for the types of non-life threatening conditions that most certainly do affect the individual's range of mobility and independence and day-to-day wellbeing. The example in my mind is of a young woman with a broken arm. The doctor has seen her every other week for three months and taken various x-rays to watch the healing process. The doctor said "If you had insurance, we would do a surgery now to correct that the bone is not healing with exactly perfect alignment." But because she would be on the minimum level of care, will likely get those x-rays and the cast, but will live the rest of her life with an arm bone that has not properly healed. This will affect her for the rest of her life but because it's not life-threatening won't be covered under a bare-minimum plan. Those types of treatments that many Americans now enjoy are only going to be a luxury that the very wealthy who can afford to pay for it privately will get. So in that respect the higher income people won't see much of a change to their lifestyle because of this. And although I will hope for different, I don't know that the state care for the very lowest of the income is going to provide a true improvement to their circumstances either.
So I'm not really Anti-Insurance because if I could afford it I would have it. And I'm not Anti-American I've got no desire to head to Canada or Mexico instead to avoid this tax. What I don't like is that a President who promised Hope and Change is leaving me specifically in worse and worse dire financial position and I have no choice whatsoever in the matter. And I'm not some special snowflake, I know there are millions of families out there just like mine and it's going to have the same negative impact on them.
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