Remember when Pelosi said we had to pass the 2,700 page healthcare abortion of a bill in order to find out what was in it? Remember when Obama told us that families would save $2,500 per year if Obamacare was passed? Remember when Obama and Reid declared that Obamacare would add nothing to the National Debt?
Well now we know what is in it. It seems when you add 30 million people to the healthcare system and guarantee to cover all pre-existing conditions, it actually costs money. Obama and his minions snuck a little clause into page 1,869 that requires every employer in the country to pay a $63 fee per person covered under their plans to pay for the pre-existing conditions. That’s a mere $25 billion extracted from employers. If you think employers are going to eat that fee, you’re smoking some good Colorado shit. A middle class family of four will see their employer pass that $250 annual cost onto them. I urge every employer to put this fee on the paycheck of every employee with the description of Obamacare Fee.
Remember when Obama declared that all employers had to cover dependents up until the age of 26? Do you think employers ate that added cost? Not a chance. My co-pays went from $15 per visit to $25 per visit over two years. Obamacare has only just begun to screw you, your employer, and the country. It will add trillions to the National Debt. You will be waiting weeks for basic services. Employers will drop millions from health coverage. Millions will not be hired by businesses because of Obamacare.
I hope you enjoy being screwed.
Surprise ‘Obamacare’ fee to be passed on to workers
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.
Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.
“Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it,” said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.
Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.
The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines.
Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.
The program “is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all,” the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to “contributions” without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.
Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.
The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama’s expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.
But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don’t provide coverage.
“This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount,” said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.
Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.
America’s Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group for health insurers, says the fund is an important program that will help stabilize the market and mitigate cost increases for consumers as the changes in Obama’s law take effect.
But employers already offering coverage to their workers don’t see why they have to pony up for the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.
“It just adds on to everything else that is expected to increase health care costs,” said economist Paul Fronstin of the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute.
The fee will be assessed on all “major medical” insurance plans, including those provided by employers and those purchased individually by consumers. Large employers will owe the fee directly. That’s because major companies usually pay upfront for most of the health care costs of their employees. It may not be apparent to workers, but the insurance company they deal with is basically an agent administering the plan for their employer.
The fee will total $12 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $5 billion in 2016. That means the per-head assessment would be smaller each year, around $40 in 2015 instead of $63.
It will phase out completely in 2017 — unless Congress, with lawmakers searching everywhere for revenue to reduce federal deficits — decides to extend it.
Hollow man says:
Not only extend it but raise it double or triple.
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11th December 2012 at 9:32 pm
AKAnon, AKA government (non)drone says:
I wouldn’t be surprised to see llpoh, and other shrewd businessmen, “opt out” in 2013. That is, opt out of running a business in this country. The Feds are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs-so what else is new.
On a different note-I work for a state agency. Under the terms of my employment, I am what is known as a “Tier 3″, eligible for full retirement (calculated from years of service and high five consecutive years’ salary) at 60. I could retire as early as 55, with substantial cut to benefits, but I don’t get medical until 60 regardless. So if Admin has convinced me my defined benefit won’t be there at 60 (still 10+years off), and Obamacare is going to be the healthcare system (for better or for worse. Or for even worse), then what is my incentive to hang in there? I could leave at 55 (or earlier) and work private sector, on my own terms. Or not. Hmmm.
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11th December 2012 at 9:46 pm
Kill Bill says:
Even Fox gets it.
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11th December 2012 at 10:49 pm
sensetti says:
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11th December 2012 at 11:20 pm
Ditchner says:
There is another side to the “pre-existing conditions” coin. Prior to Obamacare if you fell into that category you were strictly out of pocket. Not many of us can afford to pay non-negotiated hospital fees and charges so a few days in the hospital could put you out into the street. It was this insane middle group that did not qualify for government, group, or individual private insurance plans. They were out of the system due to no faults of their own and it simply wasn’t fair. In my opinion, Obamacare didn’t need to be 2700 pages, just a couple of paragraphs somewhere that corrected this odd iniquity of American society.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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11th December 2012 at 1:39 am
IraK, who's supporting America in his way, says:
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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11th December 2012 at 1:43 am
IndenturedServant says:
“Meanwhile Black citizens in Philadelphia, who have been denied jobs, who live in rat infested hovels”
What a load of horseshit! “Been denied jobs” my ass. I’d bet money that the black citizens are the deniers of jobs as in “no fucking way I’m gettin’ a job”, “give me my free shit bitchez”!
I_S
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11th December 2012 at 2:10 am
Llpoh says:
Aka – I am busy making plans to do as you have surmised. Enough is enough.
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11th December 2012 at 3:13 am
flash says:
Obamacare is just more corporate welfare.
I Told You So (Health “Reform” An Asset-Stripping Scheme)
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214735#discuss
Time to get the flag out again…
I’m rather surprised that I missed this originally — but it was brought up on the forum and definitely deserves a Ticker….
It turns out that ObamaCare makes an essential part of its regulatory scheme—an $800 billion bailout of private health insurance companies—conditional upon state governments creating the health insurance “exchanges” envisioned in the law.
This was no “drafting error.” During congressional consideration of the bill, its lead author, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), acknowledged that he intentionally and purposefully made that bailout conditional on states implementing their own Exchanges.
Note: Bailout. As in “hand money to private health insurance companies stolen from you” (as if the premiums they’ve been collecting aren’t enough to begin with!)
Now that it appears that as many as 30 states will not create Exchanges, the law is in peril. When states refuse to establish an Exchange, they are blocking not only that bailout, but also the $2,000 per worker tax ObamaCare imposes on employers. If enough states refuse to establish an Exchange, they can effectively force Congress to repeal much or all of the law.
That might explain why the IRS is literally rewriting the statute. On May 24, the IRS finalized a regulation that says the law’s $800 billion insurance-industry bailout will not be conditional on states creating Exchanges. With the stroke of pen, the IRS (1) stripped states of the power Congress gave them to shield employers from that $2,000 per-worker tax, (2) imposed that illegal tax on employers whom Congress exempted, and (3) issued up to $800 billion of tax credits and direct subsidies to private health insurance companies—without any congressional authorization whatsoever.
So the IRS (Treasury, that being Timmy Geithner) decided to ignore the law.
That’s not uncommon, you know.
The problem is that this isn’t an accident — it’s clear legislative intent. And that is documented, which makes for a wee problem in that the courts are rather more likely to get involved here as well.
The long and short of this is that PPACA, as designed by Congress and signed by the President gave the States the power to shield their residents from the $2,000 penalty, er, tax. It also made conditional the bailout on state setup of exchanges, the very predicate for the funds.
But then some states revolted and said “no, we will not set them up.”
And in response the Executive (IRS, a division of the Treasury) appears to have simply ignored the law.
As for why you should care, it’s pretty simple: If the IRS ruling falls (and it appears that legally it will) any state that refuses to implement a state exchange effectively voids the penalty in that state. This means that if you live in such a state you are exempt from the “tax/penalty” should you choose not to buy health insurance.
When the government evidences clear intent to ignore the law you are left with only a few choices. We shall see how this one plays out, but one thing is quite clear: We have a rogue administration.
Ps: For another view on this at substantial length, take a read here.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2106789
Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA
Jonathan H. Adler
Case Western Reserve University School of Law; PERC – Property and Environment Research Center
Michael F. Cannon
Cato Institute
July 16, 2012
Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine, Forthcoming
Case Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2012-27
Abstract:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) provides tax credits and subsidies for the purchase of qualifying health insurance plans on state-run insurance exchanges. Contrary to expectations, many states are refusing or otherwise failing to create such exchanges. An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule purports to extend these tax credits and subsidies to the purchase of health insurance in federal exchanges created in states without exchanges of their own. This rule lacks statutory authority. The text, structure, and history of the Act show that tax credits and subsidies are not available in federally run exchanges. The IRS rule is contrary to congressional intent and cannot be justified on other legal grounds. Because the granting of tax credits can trigger the imposition of fines on employers, the IRS rule is likely to be challenged in court.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 83
Meet Liz Fowler: Architect of ObamaCare Jumps Ship To Johnson & Johnson
Insurance Companies
Medicare
Obamacare
Via Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Following the passage of ObamaCare, several of the smartest people I know claimed that the bill was actually written by and for the drug and insurance companies rather than “the people” as Obama had claimed. My friend and orthopedic surgeon Dave Janda wrote an excellent piece that I published titled: Thoughts on Obamacare from a Surgeon and Friend.
In recent days it has emerged that Liz Fowler, who is said to have been one of the key architects of ObamaCare, is doing what any good revolving door crony capitalist would do. She is moving to the private sector to receive her payoff. Trudy Lieberman of the Columbia Journal Review explains that:
Herewith is a brief Fowler curriculum vitae: In 2001 she had a plum job as chief counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, which deals with healthcare bills. As Greenwald’s old Salon post notes, her biography says she “played a key role” in the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law that created a new senior drug benefit—a benefit provided via private insurers, not the government, as is the case for other Medicare benefits. A few years later she landed a position at WellPoint as a vice president overseeing the giant insurer’s lobbying activities.
Fowler then returned to Senate Finance in 2008 to work for Sen. Max Baucus, who chaired the committee, which was becoming Action Central for health reform. Fowler and Baucus pretty much wrote the bill that became Obamacare—and which, we should note, did not include a proposed “public option,” which was popular with ordinary people but not the insurance companies that lobbied hard to make sure it was out of the mix.
Then this week Politico’s Dave Levinthal and Anna Palmer had a scoop: Fowler is returning to the private world, this time to a senior level position leading global health policy at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group.
Revolving door on Wall Street. Check. Revolving door at the Pentagon. Check. Revolving door in Healthcare. Check mate. Welcome to America. Check your freedom at the door.
Read the full article here.http://www.cjr.org/swing_states_project/healthcare_expert_for_sale.php?page=all
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11th December 2012 at 5:57 am
John A says:
SEBELIUS AWARDS OBAMACARE EXCHANGE CONTRACT TO ‘FRIEND’
(Weekly Standard) – Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — the heart of the beast — will have to be set up and run by the Obama administration at the federal level.
States are not required to set up Obamacare exchanges, but it seems to have surprised observers that many are choosing not to. Politico reports that, with only 17 states so far having said they will set up the exchanges, the “Department of Health and Human Services’s role in bringing the law to life is going to be a lot bigger than originally thought.” More than a third of all states have already said they won’t set up the Obamacare exchanges. Among others, Republican governors Scott Walker, John Kasich, Sam Brownback, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Nathan Deal, Paul LePage, Robert Bentley, Mary Fallin, and Sean Parnell have said they’ll refuse to set up the exchanges in their states.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/sebelius-coverup_664285.html
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11th December 2012 at 6:25 am
Stan says:
A lot of people are gonna be pissed when we see the full results of obamacare in a few years. It is gonna be ugly.
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11th December 2012 at 6:46 am
Administrator says:
IS
Jackson/Irak posts the opposite of what he believes to rile up the TBP crowd and get some shit throwing underway.
He can’t goad me into a fight anymore.
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11th December 2012 at 8:00 am
Mark says:
$63 ?
If it’s only $63 i don’t mind paying it. But something tells me that’s huge under estimate.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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11th December 2012 at 10:06 am
Administrator says:
Mark
Do you mind paying my $250 share to help out Cigna and the rest of the poor insurance companies?
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11th December 2012 at 10:30 am
Stucky says:
ADMIN
Can you PLEASE answer one question?
Is IraK a dopple? I’m not asking for the identity … just a yes or no.
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11th December 2012 at 10:52 am
Petey says:
RE: Ditchner’s comments on “pre-existing conditions”.
Why would anyone buy insurance until they had some issue that they wanted covered if “pre-existing conditions” were covered? In other words, why buy homeowners insurance until your house was on fire?
But more importantly, most, if not all health insurance policies DID cover “pre-existing conditions”, but not until you have been insured for 6 months.
My wife has a chronic illness and has for the past 20 years. When I changed jobs 10 years ago any treatment for her chronic illness was not covered until I had been with my employer and their health insurance for 6 months. The “pre-existing conditions” clause is not a complete and permanent bar to coverage.
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11th December 2012 at 10:55 am
Administrator says:
Stuck
Irak is Jackson.
Irak plays the part of neo-con shit stirrer.
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11th December 2012 at 11:05 am
Stucky says:
Ahhhhh. Thank Yeeew.
I pretty much guessed it was a doppler. Nobody could be that fuckin’ ignorant except on purpose.
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11th December 2012 at 11:12 am
IndenturedServant says:
admin said:
“Jackson/Irak posts the opposite of what he believes to rile up the TBP crowd and get some shit throwing underway.
He can’t goad me into a fight anymore.”
Thanks admin, I’ll keep that in mind.
I_S
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11th December 2012 at 2:32 pm
IndenturedServant says:
llpoh said:
“Aka – I am busy making plans to do as you have surmised. Enough is enough.”
I don’t blame you one bit but it pisses me off that a good, decent, hardworking guy like you finds it so damned impossible to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare, that is it just easier to close down your business than to continue! AND, it’s a manufacturing business to boot! It’s a fucking shame! You sound the the kind of guy I’d enjoy working for.
While I hate to see you give up something that probably means a lot to you, I encourage you to hurry if you are going to fold. Before too long, it will be made illegal or just as difficult to go out of business as it is to stay in business.
If you can say, when do you expect to close? Do your employees know? If you can’t or would rather not say, I can respect that. Good luck in whichever path you choose.
I_S
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11th December 2012 at 2:48 pm
Ditchner says:
Petey: ‘why buy homeowners insurance until your house was on fire?”
Well I’m pretty sure that once your house has burned down you’d have a tough time buying insurance that would cover the damage retroactively.
In my scenario above I never said anything about getting a job. Most employer assisted group insurance, in fact, did cover pre-existing conditions. You were pretty much forced to work until you qualified for Medicare or hope to God that you stayed healthy until 65, lest you be utterly ruined.
I’m not a fan of this legislation and I think Pelosi’s “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it” says a lot about what’s wrong with Congress. I’m glad to see that pre-existing conditions finally has been addressed but, as Admin says, Obamare is a “2,700 page healthcare abortion of a bill”.
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11th December 2012 at 3:00 pm
Llpoh says:
IS – thanks. The red tap, regs, taxes and joy of employing folks I have lived with, and would continue to do so. But the class warfare crap is the final straw. To be vilifiedfor providing jobs, to be regularly targeted to pay ” my fair share”, etc. is just too much.
Here is the facts re taxes I pay: I pay 30 to 40 percent of my profits as corporate tax. In addition. I currently pay another fifteen percent on the balance of those as I take them out, meaning I actually pay around fifty percent tax on the corporate earnings. They plan to increase the div tax to around forty percent, meaning I will keep around forty percent of my corp profits. They are selling this to the sheeple by saying I pay less than a secretary (they claim the fifteen percent div tax is all I pay- which is horseshit – as I point out I pay fifty percent of my profits as tax). I serve as tax collector, insurer, administrator of regs, etc. And I am targeted in a class warfare fight.
I am sick of it. The downside is that most of my employees will be unemployed soon.
I will not sell the business. It is unsellable by and large. It is worth far more as a milk cow for a year or two. By massively jacking up prices to my customers – who will make plans to replace my products as soon as they can, but the replacement time will exceed twelve months – I can generate a lot of profit. I actually will not report profit, ,depending on the div rate that is finally settled on, but rather will take the money as bonus/salary. After twelve months or so, the customers will leave, I will have drawn down capital as much as possible via salary and other means, and the company will be bankrupt.
I will ride off into the sunset. The 100 jobs paying 50k per year plus benefits will go with me,and some hundreds more that are associated will as well.
Some will curse me as evil. It is not of my choosing, and I have been pushed into this situation. I can spend years trying to survive the onslaught, or I can play my aces now, generating as much cash and capital in a year as I could otherwise over the next decade. To draw it out would be for the benefit of the tax man and my employees, but not for me.
Who do I work for? I work for me. They have killed off my desire to be of benefit to the worldat large by targeting me in a class war.
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11th December 2012 at 3:42 pm
Charles R. says:
Anybody who voted or worse still campaigned for Him is an idiot.
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11th December 2012 at 5:17 pm
bburt says:
Once it finally looks as if the Dems will have to own this…..how will the media twist it so that the Republicans are blamed? I mean…you have to be curious. A huge amount of money is going to shift from those working 40-80 hours a week to those who don’t actually work at all.
What do you call a person who doesn’t do anything productive, can not take care of themselves or their family, in effect gets money to do nothing and is kept in this condition deliberately by the ‘ruling’ class in order to remain the ‘ruling class’? How is this person ‘better’ than a ‘slave’?
The answer of course is that they are far worse than a slave. Consider Rome just before it fell. Check out the history. Google: Stalin and the Ukraine. Read what happened to my ancestors when they refused to give up their small family farms.
If you think if CAN NOT happen here because we have guns? Check out what is happening to defense dollars that are being used to fund Urban Pacification Weapons system companies.
My, my, my……. If you are a Christian this is a terrific time to be alive. NOW..you HAVE to walk by faith and not sight! If you are a Christian just remember your history. We died by the millions and eventually took over the world and did it without firing a shot. Time to get your game on.
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11th December 2012 at 5:30 pm
DaveL says:
“Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.”
What are the odds that “Chantel” voted for Obama?
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11th December 2012 at 5:38 pm
The facts on Obamacare just got even worse | TheTradersWire.com says:
[...] smoking some good Colorado s#$ %. A middle-class family of four will see… Read full article… More on Obamacare: Warning: This list of Obamacare taxes will slam the rich, the [...]
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11th December 2012 at 6:35 pm
Administrator says:
Regardless, You’ll Pay More
by Michael D. Tanner
Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.
Added to cato.org on December 12, 2012
It has largely gone unnoticed amidst the hullabaloo surrounding the fiscal cliff, but regardless of what happens with the cliff negotiations, taxes are going up next year. The president may be calling for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes by 2022 in exchange for not driving the country over the cliff, but that does not count Obamacare, which will impose an additional $1 trillion in new or increased taxes over the next ten years, a big portion of which take effect in 2013.
For example, we’ve heard a great deal about President Obama’s demand that taxes go up for individuals earning $200,000 per year or families making more than $250,000. But under Obamacare, those families will already be hit with a 0.9 percent hike in the Medicare payroll tax on earnings over these thresholds starting January 1. Roughly 3 million Americans will end up paying more as a result of this hike, which is projected to raise $86 billion. And while $250,000 per year may seem like a great deal of money to most people, many of those earners are far from rich. Indeed, in New York City, for example, a teacher married to a police officer could fall into that bracket.
In addition, those families will now also have their interest, dividend, and capital-gains income subject to the 3.8 percent Medicare tax, a $123 billion hit to the economy. At a time when the economy desperately needs more risk-taking and investment, we are about to make it harder for entrepreneurs to put their capital to work. And this tax will also fall heavily on many small businesses.
Moreover, it is important to realize that this tax hike would come on top of the tax hikes that President Obama is seeking as part of the fiscal-cliff talks. If the president were to get the tax increase on “unearned income” that he is currently demanding, adding Obamacare’s tax hikes on high-income Americans would bring the total tax on interest and dividends for these people to 43.4 percent, while the tax on capital gains would hit 23.8 percent. Talk about falling off a cliff.
Perhaps the next time that President Obama gives yet another speech about how the rich are not paying their fair share, he might at least pause to point out that their taxes are already going up.
Of course, it is not just the “rich” who will be hit with Obamacare taxes next year. Nearly 30 million workers, most of them middle-class, currently participate in Flexible Spending Account programs at work. Next year, the maximum tax-exempt contribution to those accounts will be cut in half, from $5,000 to just $2,500. That change will hit nearly 5.7 million workers who currently exceed the $2,500 cap, and will now have to pay more of their medical bills with after-tax dollars.
Middle-class workers will also be among the biggest losers from the changes that Obamacare imposes on tax-deductible medical expenses. Currently, Americans can take a tax deduction for medical expenses above 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI). According to the most recent IRS data, 6 percent of all taxpayers, 7.5 million Americans, took advantage of this provision. But starting next year, that floor will be raised to 10 percent of AGI, meaning that millions of middle-class workers will lose this deduction. Among those most likely to feel the pinch are older and sicker workers, especially older workers and near-retirees with limited incomes but high medical bills. For a family with an adjusted income of $80,000 per year and medical expenses of just under $8,000 per year, a not uncommon situation, this amounts to a $500 tax hike.
The government expects to raise $40 billion from these two Obamacare provisions, but workers will be left poorer.
Workers will also be indirectly socked with the cost of Obamacare’s new business taxes. For example, next year there will be a new 2.3 percent excise tax on medical-device manufacturers. Especially pernicious, this tax is assessed against a firm’s total revenue rather than its adjusted income, making the real impact far greater than for a traditional income tax of the same size. While the industry’s 360,000 employees could pay the highest price in lost jobs and lower wages, all of us could end up paying more in higher medical costs, as much of the tax will be passed on in higher prices. We can expect everything from pacemakers to wheelchairs to become more expensive.
All of this is only round one of Obamacare’s taxes. Another wave of Obamacare tax hikes will hit in 2014, including the individual-mandate “tax,” courtesy of John Roberts, that is expected to fall on as many as 6 million workers, as well as the tax accompanying Obamacare’s employer mandate. There will also be another batch of business taxes, including some levied on hospitals and insurers. Notably, there is a new assessment levied on health plans for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion to cushion health-insurance companies from the costs of covering people with pre-existing conditions. This just-announced fee, which will start at $63 per person and fall on employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans, appears to be the latest invention of the far-reaching discretion granted to HHS under the health-care law. HHS has also recently announced that it has given itself the power to impose a 3.5 percent premium tax on insurers who participate in Obamacare’s federally run insurance exchanges.
And farther down the road lurks the 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans. That tax will hit in 2018.
That amounts to a lot of taxes — even without the fiscal-cliff hikes — which would be bad enough even if it paid for Obamacare. But, of course, it doesn’t. If one accounts for all of Obamacare’s costs, such as implementation costs that are “authorized but not appropriated,” and eliminates double counting of Medicare savings and other bookkeeping games, Obamacare will add roughly $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next ten years — coincidentally, almost as much as President Obama is seeking in non-Obamacare tax hikes.
More taxes, more debt: Welcome to the other cliff.
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11th December 2012 at 8:10 pm
joyce says:
Well, this forum is populated by those who work for what they have..all the rant won’t change a thing. I can not believe all the people who are now moving abroad..Trust me it is not the ones who don’t have a job or a business. I love this country, Unlike Mrs. Obama, I have Always been proud to be an American..Who is behind this deal..1 person cannot do all this by themself..this is an effort of many…
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11th December 2012 at 5:45 am
Wayne says:
Quit whining. We need a way to help people who are suffering. $63 is a cheap way to help others in need. Have a heart.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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11th December 2012 at 10:25 am
Larry Porter says:
Check out what is really going to become of the U.S. “After America: Rebuilding” is available on Amazon Kindle. It even has a new Constitution. Pretty neat read.
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11th December 2012 at 10:30 am
Administrator says:
Wayne
The $25 billion is being paid to insurance conglomerates. Liberals have a hard time reading for comprehension. That’s why the country is so fucked.
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11th December 2012 at 10:37 am
NAVSOG says:
Got to love it because even the lib’s and democrapic socilists get burned
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11th December 2012 at 3:22 pm
Micro-Be says:
I wish there were a way I could take a big nasty greasy Chinese buffet shit on page 1350 of the bill and then walk into Pelosi’s office, open it up, and show her my asshole’s interpretation of what is in it.
She wouldn’t get it.
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11th December 2012 at 3:55 pm
Micro-Be says:
Wayne –
When you say “we need a way” it really means “I’m going to force some motherfuckers at gun point to pay for shit that gives our collective hearts ‘I’m Important boners’.”I’d be the odds are good that your compassion ends at the edge of another person’s paycheck. Now off with you Wayne, you can’t waste time posting on blogs, you’ve got charity work to do.
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11th December 2012 at 4:04 pm
Johnny says:
Who is going to believe you if you keep demonising Pres Obama? Your credibility and inpartiality is now being questioned by very discerning people.
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11th December 2012 at 12:51 am
Administrator says:
Johnny can’t spell. An Obama voter teaches us a lesson.
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11th December 2012 at 8:14 am
Eddie says:
Obamacare is a corporate pork barrel.
I don’t blame the Prez or anyone who worked for universal healthcare, which is a worthy goal (other than the fact is that we can’t afford to pay for the level of service to which we’ve become accustomed), but rather I blame an insurance lobby so strong that they torpedoed anything that wasn’t pure pork.
It’s just business as usual. I get screwed so poor people can get free shit, and profits are created for people who earn a living figuring out how NOT to pay guys like me for the work we do. Oh, what a tangled web…
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11th December 2012 at 8:57 am