Guest Post by Monty Pelerin
ObamaCare is the gift that keeps on giving — if you are a Republican. If you are a taxpayer or a Democrat politician, it keeps right on taking. Here is a blurb from Tom Howell, Jr. that states taxpayers are in for bigger surprises than they were told:
Those Americans who didn’t get health insurance last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS asks them to fork over their Obamacare penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting.
The Affordable Care Act requires those who didn’t have insurance last year and didn’t qualify for one of the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1 percent of their household income as their penalty.
TurboTax, an online tax service, estimated that the average penalty for lacking health insurance in 2014 will be $301.
When ObamaCare passed I suggested that it would prevent any economic recovery in its passed form. It was also suggested that it might be the dumbest political move ever and that it could destroy the Democrat Party as a dominant political force. At this point, there are fewer reservations regarding either of these possibilities than when they were originally made.
William Voegeli recounts the after-effects of Democrats who supported this horrific legislation:
Half of the 60 Democratic senators who voted for the Affordable Care Act in December 2009—the exact number needed to prevent its being filibustered to death, since all Republicans opposed it—are no longer in the Senate. These ex-senators include eight who were defeated by Republicans, and eight more who chose not to run again and were succeeded by Republicans.
The problem for Democrats (and US citizens) is that ObamaCare gets worse, not better, over time. Time requires more rocks to be overturned and more and bigger reptiles to appear.
Political “seller remorse” on the part of Democrat politicians is already rampant. However, “buyer remorse” on the part of Democrat voters is about to take a big leap upward.
2015 should be interesting.
What with the IRS having budget problems and threatening furloughs, how are they to collect more taxes, collect obamacare fines, figure out the subsidy fuck up, (and what a fuck up it will be if the S court rules against the states without exchanges) and pay tax returns on time, while they can’t even get along on $29 Million taxpayer dollars per day.
I know! Bailout the IRS.
What’s funny is a few people bellyaching about a $301 fine (not that the fine isn’t an unconstitutional abomination) but failing to understand that rocketing premiums are caused by Obamacare itself due to 1) direct costs like the medical device tax and medical surcharge tax 2) the uncertainty around how many people might buy insurance only after they get cancer/AIDS, etc. and 3) Insurance companies taking the opportunity to profiteer. The incremental number of people who have gained insurance due to Obamacare is probably around 3 million; meanwhile the other 300+ million of us take it up the ass.
Isaka….that’s without lube…..not covered by Obozocare.
I would need a heart transplant to hit my new deductible.