Tag: mandate

Colorado young people discovering that thousands > hundreds. #obamacare #mandate

Forgive me for saying this, but: I told you so.

A note, and a clarification on this Denver Post piece:

Matt Leising spends about $3,600 a year on medication to treat asthma and sinus problems, so he was supportive when Washington politicians were debating the Affordable Care Act.

After the law passed and then began rolling out last fall, Leising went to Colorado’s health care exchange website to look for coverage, but the 29-year-old Littleton resident quickly realized he couldn’t afford any of the plans.

The lowest monthly premium was $175, but the deductible was $10,000, meaning he would still have to pay for his medication and other expenses. He decided to just pay for his medication out of pocket and take the $95 tax penalty for a single person.

Continue reading Colorado young people discovering that thousands > hundreds. #obamacare #mandate

Dan Lipinski (D, IL-03) helpfully tells us which seats to prioritize in 2014.

Let me annotate this list of Democratic Members of Congress that have decided to stab Barack Obama in the back in order to keep their seats call for a delay of Obamacare (freshmen in red):

Rep. Lipinski was joined in introducing this bill with U.S. Reps. Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-9) [LEAN DEMOCRATIC], Scott Peters (CA-52) [TOSS-UP], Pete Gallego (TX-23) [LEAN DEMOCRATIC], Ron Barber (AZ-2) [TOSS-UP], Pat Murphy (FL-18) [TOSS-UP], John Barrow (GA-12) [LEAN DEMOCRATIC], Filemon Vela (TX-34) and Joe Garcia (FL-26) [TOSS-UP].

Lipinksi and Vela are both considered Safe by Cook Political Report – but you have to wonder, huh?  Especially since they’re both freshmen legislators.  At any rate, it might not be a bad idea to do some recruiting in those districts, huh?

Actually, that’s a good general rule.  Every district should have a candidate.

Via @Freddoso

Moe Lane

The three interlocking gears of the #Obamacare #FAIL.

Originally, I was going to use the step-stool analogy, only the problem here is that in order for Obamacare to work all three problems need to be resolved.  At the moment the administration is more or less working on one full time, and desultorily working on another.  The third has yet to be addressed.  So… consider a set of gears, with three obstructions.  All three obstructions must be cleared before the machine can operate.

If it can operate. Continue reading The three interlocking gears of the #Obamacare #FAIL.

Newsday columnist concludes: #Obamacare is a mug’s game.

I’m not entirely certain that the math is right, but the calculation sure is:

Bad coverage on the state exchange for my family, with $6,000 deductibles per person, would cost a total of about $9,000 per year. And unless you have a real sickly year, insurance with deductibles that high is just a very expensive form of not having coverage at all. Good coverage would run us about $15,000 per year.

But the maximum fine for refusing to buy coverage is 1 percent of your pay this year, and 2.5 percent in the future. That’s because if the plan included fines high enough to induce the purchase of coverage, the law would not have passed. So a family man like me has to make $360,000 per year, once the fine goes up, to make buying even the cheapest coverage a better deal than the fine. Continue reading Newsday columnist concludes: #Obamacare is a mug’s game.

16 days and counting on #obamacare exchanges rollout: how’s it going?

…That bad, huh?

For months all eyes have been on October 1 — the first day people can sign up for Obamacare.

But as that day approaches, many people working on the nuts and bolts of the health law are tamping down any expectations of a sign-up stampede.

Not everyone will enroll immediately. And that, they say, is the way they want it.

Translation: despite the fact that the feds will be spending $12 million to advertise the new exchanges at the end of September, and that various states are spending several times that number for their own, specific exchanges… the government doesn’t want any of that advertising to in fact succeed, apparently. Nah, they’d much prefer that people hammer the sites in December; although why anybody would do that, either, is not really explained. Anybody without insurance at that point is looking at a hundred buck fine that won’t even hit until the year after next, anyway. And that’s assuming that the White House doesn’t delay the individual mandate ‘temporarily.’ So I’m missing wht the government is expecting a surge of sign-ups, ever…

Yes, I know, I’m being deliberately obtuse.  Articles like the above one from Politico are what you get when the government is having a slow-motion train wreck of a new policy rollout.

Should you pay the #obamacare tax? Crunch the numbers for yourself!

Here is a handy chart for individuals looking to calculate their Obamacare tax.  I’m putting it up because there’s a bit of confusion out there over how much people can expect to be taxed.  For example: the $95 or 1% rule is on taxable income, not total income. This means that you have to subtract $10K currently to determine how much the government will tax you for not having health care, which of course removes $100 from your final yearly tax obligation.  For some strange reason the administration isn’t too keen in letting people know just how small the tax is going to be for young, unmarried workers.

Crazy, huh?

Anyway, below is the chart, based on the data found here.  Remember, the final tax will be the higher of the flat rate, and a percentage of adjusted taxable income; everybody’s getting hit with this. Continue reading Should you pay the #obamacare tax? Crunch the numbers for yourself!

#Obamacare continues to accelerate towards the brick wall.

I suppose that we have to explain why this is likely to happen.

The law was designed to extend insurance to most of the 50 million Americans who lack coverage. But when the main features of the law go live Jan. 1, the share of those people set to remain uninsured is bigger than the proportion set to gain coverage. That raises the prospect of a long battle to make the law work as its supporters intended, and the likelihood that opponents will dismiss it as a costly failure.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected soon after the law passed that it would reduce the number of uninsured to 23 million people in 2019, from about 50 million people now. In an updated projection earlier this year, the economists estimated around 30 million people would still be without coverage that year. The office has yet to revise its estimates in the wake of this week’s announcement.

Continue reading #Obamacare continues to accelerate towards the brick wall.

#rsrh Supreme Court to rule Obamacare is a tax on middle class?

If so… um, thanks?

To sum up the argument: the Obama administration has always been two-faced over whether the individual mandate is a tax or not, due to the horrifically botched way that the Democrats shoved Obamacare down America’s throat. If the mandate is not a tax, its constitutionality becomes highly iffy; and if it is a tax then Obama lied like a cheap rug when he promised the American people that their taxes weren’t going up:

Mind you, people shouldn’t have believed that nonsense from Obama in the first place.  Politicians lie, people. Continue reading #rsrh Supreme Court to rule Obamacare is a tax on middle class?

#rsrh FM radio in your iPhone!

Go have a drink before you read this.  And be grateful that the six-pack of beer doesn’t have a clay pot attached that’s full of slowly fermenting barley mash.

Yet.

Music labels and radio broadcasters can’t agree on much, including whether radio should be forced to turn over hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for the music it plays. But the two sides can agree on this: Congress should mandate that FM radio receivers be built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable electronics.

Via Penny Arcade, who responded more or less as you might expect.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh FM radio in your iPhone!