How Obamacare is Costing My “Middle-Class” Family More in 2013

Obama’s medical insurance legislation that was first billed as not being a “tax” (hilarious given the number of “fees” and “surcharges” it levies; even the Surpreme Court could not pass up the opportunity to classify it as such), and also claimed that the plan would be “revenue neutral” (which it clearly won’t be if you look out a few years) also gave the impression that the costs would be primarily borne by business and the rich. Well, middle class Americans are bearing quite a burden as well, regardless of what you read in the ever-adoring mainstream media. See, in anticipation of the pending legislation, healthcare costs have skyrocketed leading into and shortly after it’s passage. It’s hard to believe, by my insurance costs (company sponsored by a large blue-chip) zoomed by 43% this year. Unbelievable huh?

Now, some critics will say that the cost increases had nothing to do with Obamacare and that they were increasing before hand. While I don’t think that is the case, let’s check out some of the other non-plan related hard costs our family is seeing since its passage. We make well less than the $250,000 per year that Obama calls the top of the middle class, so I’m not being hit with some of the surcharges and fees that more wealthy Americans are. But here are a few spots where I’m paying more out of pocket for medical coverage than I would have prior to Obamacare:

…continue reading How Much Obamacare Costs Middle Class Families

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KaD
KaD

Who the hell else BUT the middle class would bear the burden. The FSA has nothing to give and the poor rich people bought their cake (at the local, state and national levels) and are going to eat it too. All of it, even if it kills them.

ThePessimisticChemist
ThePessimisticChemist

@KaD – Actually the the bulk of the upper class is taking a beating as well with these types of changes.

Obama has been rough on them, and its been causing a massive decline in entrepreneurship, which not only decreases the number of jobs on the market, but decreases their quality as well*

*Assuming other industries are like the chem and biotech industry. For us, small businesses are a life saver, because large companies really don’t employ that many scientists relative to their actual employee total compared to start-ups and small businesses.

card802
card802

Llpoh will back me up.
This is government logic at work. To pay for a voter demand, we tax the voter by taxing business or pretending to tax the wealthy. But, the government will always protect the very wealthy, so it will ultimately fall to the middle class, but not directly.

Business needs to understand what is facing them. They need to have a feeling for what the future of taxation is going to be before they will commit to job creation. It may come as a shock to many but business owners don’t wake up in the morning and think, “I’m gonna hire me some employees today.”

If the future for business is more regulation and more taxation, they will not expand, they will not add jobs. They will tuck their balls, and keep their heads down, shut down and sell, or possibly move out of the country if costs become too great a burden.

The problem is a double edged sword.

If the cost is passed onto business, business must raise it’s cost to the consumer. If the consumer can’t afford the price increase they don’t purchase. If the consumer doesn’t purchase, they lose their job.

Simple.

Stucky

The real cost of Obamacare is the number of qualified doctors leaving the profession. Just ask AWD, Hope, or Ms Freud.

Be prepared in the future to have your ass probed by some fucking dot-head.

You’ll soon be willing to pay two grand for just your annual physical exam from a real doctor, an American …. if you can find one.

Eddie
Eddie

There should be a name for the socio-economic group below the 1%.

Call us the Heavy Lifters. We are already bearing a disproportionate amount of the load, and we are the only people who still have work and produce enough income for the Vampire State to drain anymore.

People wonder when our society will collapse. I am beginning to think that it will be when those of us boomers who actually pay substantial taxes finally manuever our way into self-sufficiency and/or retirement.

The rich are building compounds and stacking gold.

People like me are buying farms and building off-the-grid houses to reduce our dependency on the currency and energy dependent, long supply chains. Some are emigrating. Some just won’t make enough money anymore to be middlle class.

At some point a lot of us will be at the end of our endless donating to the socialist regime. Either due to planning or old age or just being bled dry.

What then? When will this be? My guess is that this will blow up, not right away, but in 15 to 20 years.

DaveL
DaveL

If you are a family of four and are low class(?) making less than $92K per year, you will get your medical insurance partially subsidized by the government and thus, be recruited into the FSA.

AWD

Ha, tough shit. Obamacare is the largest tax increase in the history of the U.S.A.

Bend over, you’re paying for free healthcare for 45 million new FSA members.

Retirement, here I come!

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MuckAbout

The “middle class”, whatever the hell that is, always picks up the tab.

Businesses DO NOT PAY TAXES… Let me repeat that in another way: CORPORATIONS DO NOT PAY TAXES.

They send money to the Governments at all levels and add the tab to the cost of what they produce and the middle class buys it, paying sufficient $$$ that sees to it the business or corporation makes either a small (free market) profit or a large (government protected or subsidized) profit.

The middle class picks up the whole damn tab for the FSA, the welfare, the corporate “taxes” every bit of it.

The FSA just takes and does not pay, the rich shelter (with plenty of help from the government and tax loopholes) and do not pay, the middle class catches it in the ass and pays a lot, neither being a taker or rich.

Pity the middle class. Piss on the FSA. Throw away all the loopholes for the rich and let’s level the playing ground. (Ha! HA!)

MA

card802
card802

Yeah, what muck said. People pay taxes, more to the point, not the poor, not the wealthy, the “others.”

Llpoh
Llpoh

Muck – re tacking on of taxes: sorry,, but in the global economy, you simply cannot tack on extra charges, unless you are a monopoly. You will go broke. Even stupid sheeple will buy the cheapest product they can find.

Otherwise I agree with you.

Card – yep, youse is right, too.

DaveL
DaveL

“The middle class picks up the whole damn tab for the FSA, the welfare, the corporate “taxes” every bit of it.”

I’m worried most about picking up the tab from borrowing over a trillion fucking dollars a year. EVERY FUCKING YEAR!

“but in the global economy, you simply cannot tack on extra charges, unless you are a monopoly. You will go broke. Even stupid sheeple will buy the cheapest product they can find.”

Until every fucking job in this country has been shipped overseas and then we won’t be buying squat, cheap or otherwise.

Hollow man
Hollow man

It is ok. There will be plenty of 100 dollar bills floating around thanks to the bernack.

llpoh
llpoh

I cannot help myself – I need to revisit Muck’s comment “CORPORATIONS DO NOT PAY TAXES.They send money to the Governments at all levels and add the tab to the cost of what they produce and the middle class buys it”.

That is just plain false. Absolutely false. It is commonly believed however. If it were true, then corporations would charge whatever they want for a product – and that is not the case. Further, if it were true, the corporations that produce necessities of life would charge so much that no other product would be affordable – no igadgets and big screen TVs, etc. And further evidence of this fact is this – if what Muck said was true, corporations would not spend one red cent trying to minimize the tax rate they pay. But in fact they spend megamillions to minimize their tax rates.

Corporate tax reduces the rate of return to investors – pure and simple. The higher the the tax rate, the lower the rate of return. And given the global economy, capital will flow to those areas where the rate of return is maximized.

At the end of 2012, there is talk that the dividend rate will increase to either 18+%, or to 40+%. If it goes to 18+%, there will be some impact, but if it goes to 40+%, you wil see the outflow of capital the likes of which have never before been witnessed.

Some say that dividend tax rates wer previously that high or higher, and that it will be stomached by investors. What they do not take into account is that previously, the US was a virtual economic monopoly – it was the only game in town. That is not the case today.

Combine a corporate tax rate of around 40% with a dividend tax rate of 40% (a net tax rate on corporate profits of 64%!!!!), and you will see capital flood out of the country. Who will invest for that rate of return, given the risk. With P/E of 20 to 1, that would mean an effective return of around 2% after tax, for enormous risk. Good luck with that.

Stucky

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Stucky

But then there’s this graph;

U.S. corporate taxes that were ACTUALLY paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. both taxes its corporations less and raises less in revenue from corporate taxes than its foreign competitors:

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Pretty damn confusing.

llpoh
llpoh

Highest corp tax rate + highest dividend tax rate = capital flees to ANYWHERE else.

Stuck is correct in that corps manage to minimize their taxes. Private investors ability to minimize draconian taxes on dividends will be very difficult to do. They will take their bats and balls and go elsewhere, if at all possible. Draconian tax rates will not work in a global economy.

llpoh
llpoh

Stuck – stats can be manipulated in al manner of ways. It does not say if the profits being reported are total corp profits (ie include internationally earned profits), etc. etc. etc. The fact is the corp tax rate is the highest in the world – and big corps spend heaps to minimize that rate. The high rate severely impacts small corps that cannot avoid the rate as they do not have legions of lawyers and accountants and lobbyists. If the div rate skyrockets, the folks that invest in the big corps will run for the hills, as they will get little return on their investments. Their returns on T-Bills etc will be as great as they can expect on high risk shares, so who will invest in corporations?

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

Ironically the US production rate is up
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But emplioyment is down.

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Health insurance almost doubles every eight years…even without Obamacare [which wont do anything to alter that but subsidise the health insurance industry]

llpoh
llpoh

KB – manufacturing becomes more efficient each year – they make more with less year after year.

To me, it seems that outsourcing will be a large factor in the drop seen around 2000. I do not know how they arrived at the “manufacturing output figures” but it is possible they are counting final product, that each year includes more sub-parts sourced from overseas. Only a guess, but an educated one.

Manufacturing is screwed as a base for the economy – more will be made by fewer each year, and so the percentage of population needed in manufacturing for the same output will shrink year by year – both locally and world-wide. And the US will be hit more than most due to the high cost of labor and doing business.

MuckAbout

@llpoh: My friend, you took my statement and ran off into right field with it. My statement is absolutely correct unless taxes get so high that a business or corporations’ sales fail because of the added cost due to tacking on those taxes to the price. Corporations and businesses can only shave prices to the point they lose money at which time, they either close the doors or figure out how to make whatever they’re making cheaper (like selling off the factory, keeping the sales dept. and make it in China).

I’m sorry I over simplified the situation – but I maintain that I’m correct right up to the point that business is taxed out of business because adding the tax to the sales price makes them uncompetitive and —- busted. Taxes can hurt business – but business does not pay any of them.

How now??

MA

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

So wages are stagnant and there is less work. Our genius millennial iStupads help employment in China and increase profits for rioting serfs and for Apples shareholders but that does not create jobs for them here in the country they profess to love, sans the obsolete they would prefer to run over, a la Death Race 2000 in their parents Toyota with the faulty gas pedal.

Its all the boomers fault, natch, that dumbass Ms and Xers cant get a decent job greasing the McDonald McMuffin machine in some automated factory with their information technology degree creating apps for a phone that has more memory than their pot wracked fouled and misfiring neurons.

MuckAbout

Besides that, taxes are breaking me.. I get a 1.7% increase in my SS next year with inflation running at 5.5% (http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts) and ObamaCareForTheFSA will cost me $3,000 a year next year. That about $450 raise versus $3000 in additional taxes.. Net? ($2,550)……. In da hole….

With a little luck they will raise the retirement age to 80 and I’ll have to go back to work for 6 more years.

MA

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

KB – manufacturing becomes more efficient each year – they make more with less year after year. -llpoh

It becomes more and more automated, and cheaper to produce, of course, but then there is the problem with peak efficiency and not enough gainfully employed to purchase that product.

Its a catch 22 of sorts Im afraid.

llpoh
llpoh

Muck – all is good – I knew it wasn’t meant as a detailed position piece, but I assumed it was a general rant at the protected position of megacorps! I know you know this shit, but I also know others do not, and they need this stuff clarified (why I said “commonly believed”).

The US is rapidly becoming the highest taxing nation on earth. That is truly scary. I understand your points to the point of pain.

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