Guest Post by Eric Peters
Well, I just got my “second reminder” about my “shared responsibility” payment – which I have not paid and do not intend to pay. The letter states that ” . . .if you don’t pay $701.69 by August 30, 2018, the amount of interest you owe will increase.”
Italics added.
Very interesting, this business about “owing” interest on a debt I never incurred.
Some people I have never met in a far-away place decided I must send money to a privately owned, for-profit business for services I am uninterested in purchasing. Put simply, in plain language, a private business has somehow managed to get the federal government to act as its collections agency – and not for any debt contracted by people such as myself but to force them to buy services they have no interest in buying.
Even those who believe taxation is legitimate rather than the euphemized/legalized theft it seems to be to me ought to be at least slightly unsettled by this “shared responsibility” thing, which isn’t about funding the government.
It is about funding the insurance mafia.
The thing is halting, when you ponder it for even a moment. If Blue Cross – and so on – can use the government to force people to buy their product, I see no logical reason why General Motors, for instance, cannot also use the government to force people to buy a new car every so often.
The same arguments can be used. Is it not true that people who drive older cars, without all the latest saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety features, are at least potentially threatening the social body with higher costs, because their older, less saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe cars are more likely to crash and if they do crash, the driver stands a greater chance of being injured and injured more severely?
Isn’t it wrong that people who do buy new cars are, in effect, paying more because not everyone is buying new cars, thereby more equally and fairly distributing the cost?
The fact that you keep your older car well-maintained and are a safe driver – no accidents in years, no claims filed against you, ever – seems to me to cut no more logical ice than the argument that I maintain my body, am in excellent health, have no chronic health issues and have not incurred even 10 cents’ worth of costs for my “care” on anyone.
In both case, the counterargument is – you might.
And therefore, you must.
Pay up, that is.
For services you not only didn’t contract for but which you haven’t even used. It’s a double gyp – like being forced to pay for a hotel suite in a city you never set foot in – and then punished for not paying “your” mini-bar bill.
The good news is that – for the moment – the hounds are fairly toothless. All the feds can do on behalf of their employers – the insurance mafia, I mean – is threaten collections.
They cannot actually collect.
Well, they can withhold. If you “owe” a “shared responsibility” payment, they can apply what you “owe” against any “refund” due you from your actual taxes – the euphemized theft which goes to fund whatever the government does, along with the legions of government workers who ride us like lampreys do sharks.
But they cannot – for now – seize what you “owe” from your bank account or place a lien on your property to compel you to hand over what you “owe” that way.
The worry, though, is that this will change.
It is true that the current Decider decided to rescind the “individual mandate” – the gun jabbed in our ribs by the insurance mafia, compelling us to hand over money for services we don’t want and haven’t used – effective next year. But the mandate is still in force this year – and all the years prior.
Thus, if you declined to hand over your protection money to the mafia this year or last year or any of the years prior to 2019, you will “owe” a “shared responsibility” payment and it will remain on the books, accruing interest.
When a new Decider is (s)elected by a minority of the population (only about half the voting-eligible population actually votes in a presidential election and the winner is chosen by about half of that half, or about 26 percent of “the people”) he or she may simply decide to reinstate the “individual mandate” and change the law such that the Luca Brasi arm of the insurance mafia – the Eye Are Ess – acquires more than the power to merely withhold.
If that happens – and it is not unlikely to happen – millions of “shared responsibility” refuseniks could suddenly be facing financial ruin as the accumulated fines plus interest suddenly become “due” and collectible.
And if that does happen, maybe – just maybe – some of them will decide to fight back and perhaps with more than words.
Thieves and bandidos at work..
Once you’ve ‘incurred the debt’ of being born into this or that warlord’s warlordocracy – “citizenship” – there is no limit to what might be ‘assessed.’
See Exhibit 243, Pujo Committee Report (1913). The cross pall•inization of the competition busters (whom they & useful idiots – also theirs – call the trust\busters).
http://imageoffinance.com/ ?portfolio=framing-finance
Next step was fed reserve.
link’s goofy. slide the right bit back against the left bit.
We injuns are exempt! Bwahahahahahaha! Suck it, palefaces!
I see I have triggered a paleface. Bwahahahahaha!
Tesla. You are helping people buy mandated emissions free shitboxes right now.
The sky-high pay of health care CEOs
Pay your “fair share” of the mafia scam. CEOs are hurting since ACA-not…
The CEOs of 70 of the largest U.S. health care companies cumulatively have earned $9.8 billion in the seven years since the Affordable Care Act was passed, and their earnings have grown faster than most Americans’ during that time, according to an Axios analysis of federal financial documents.
Why it matters: The ACA has not hurt the health care industry. Stock prices have boomed, and CEOs took home nearly 11% more money on average every year since 2010 — far outstripping the wage growth of nearly all Americans. But the analysis also reveals that the pay packages for the country’s influential health care executives don’t give them incentives to control health care spending — something that economists, policymakers and even Warren Buffett have said is the most pressing problem in health care.
Data: Analysis of company filings; Chart: Lazaro Gamio, Naema Ahmed / Axios
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What we found: Total earnings amount to an average of $20 million (median of $11 million) per CEO per year. A vast majority of pay came in the form of vested stock.
The largest haul: John Martin, former CEO of the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, made $863 million in the ACA era — the most of any health care CEO.
The big takeaway: Health care inflation continues to blow away general economic inflation, and a big reason why is because health care executives are not paid to slow spending.
What the analysis covers: The total CEO compensation (salary, bonuses, stock, perks and retirement/severance when relevant) each year since 2010, when the ACA went into effect, based on company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
These 70 corporations were chosen because they are based in the United States and are among the largest publicly traded health care companies, together encompassing more than $2 trillion of annual revenue. It did not include the generous pay packages of not-for-profit hospital CEOs.
Our unique tabulation: We calculated the actual realized gains of CEOs’ stock options and awards (money that they had to pay taxes on), not the estimated fair value of their stock shown in the federal filings’ summary compensation tables.
The estimated value of stock is misleading and does not accurately depict how much a person made in a given year.
Actual realized gains show that CEOs are making a lot more than headlines suggest.
William Lazonick, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Matthew Hopkins, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Academic-Industry Research Network, reviewed the analysis for accuracy. They have written extensively about corporate executive compensation and why actual realized stock gains matter.
“What is the relationship between their high pay and the role of stock prices in their high pay and the problems of the health care system?” Lazonick said. “There is a very close relationship, but it’s not apparent to most people.”
The stock story: A gigantic portion of what CEOs make comes in the form of vested stock, and those incentives drive their decision-making. The analysis shows that since the ACA was passed, health care executives routinely took measures to inflate stock prices — such as repurchasing shares or issuing dividends to shareholders — that led to higher take-home pay.
Stock-heavy pay also drives CEOs to do the exact opposite of their buzzword-laden goals of creating a “patient-centered” health system that focuses on “value.”
Actions that would benefit the broader health care system:
Lower prices
Eliminate unnecessary procedures, tests or devices
Coordinate care
Instead, CEOs often focus on what benefits the stock price:
Sell more prescription drugs
Perform more procedures and tests
Create new medical therapies that may not add value to someone’s life
Raise prices above inflation
Do anything to create higher earnings per share
Action. Singular. To benefit customers (fuck “the system”) :: Competition.
“Until” then, this isn’t an industry. It’s a rentusdry.
And assuming these reptiles emit any heat at all, rent-seekers deserve heat-seekers.
Here in Germany, we have to pay 17.50 Eur for the public broadcasting, each month, so leftist propaganda an entertainment can be delivered. This
has been approved by the high court this summer. 8000000000 Eur each year for this. Health insurance is mandatory too, but you can “choose” some details. Most people here never heard about the issue descibed in the article above, they can’t even think freedom.
Horst,the taxpayers in US forced to help fund pbs tv and npr radio,so,we also at moment kinda taking that hit.I am hoping we can get a lot of that changed in the next year or so,how,really open to politically or otherwise.
So adorable,spell check wants me to capitalize pbs!
Horst – you Germans are as screwed as anyone else. You have my favorite tax of all time:
Germans have to pay an additional 10% tax to the churches in Germany. Hahahahahahahahahaha! It can be gotten tid of, by going in and paying a fee saying you are an aethist. But the various churches actively hunt down birth records, baptism records, etc., so as to determine if citizens are members of their religion so that they can collect taxes. Plus, of course, they pass around the plate at services.
Man, what a rort. For a smart people, you Germans are sure maroons! And let us not talk about the Muzzie invasion happening right under your noses. Germany is toast.
Health and car insurance are in practice huge transfer payments from the Whites and Asians to Blacks who have much worse health and driving habits. Rates are based on a matrix of factors and people with the same factors supposedly pay the same rates. A tiny scratch on a bumper in a parking lot is counted as an at fault accident for 5 years; you might as well have hit a tree stoned blind at 45 mph. Rates should be based on the policy holders actual history: good health and no reported accidents should equate to a corresponding a low insurance premium period with no tack ons for the FSA.
Got Audited in 2016, to put things in context my accountant of many years basically must have dumped my return on some intern’s desk and never checked it before doing the E-File. I can’t read a Tax return to save my life, being self employed I always took the expensive, so-called safe root and gave everything to an accountant. When I received the tax return I even saw problems like depreciating property I had already sold among other things. The whole Audit turned into a total debacle and stretched all the way into mid 2018 between my new accountant trying to get records from the old one, asking the IRS questions that were taking months to get answered. To make a long story short – being self employed I was one of the lucky people who had my nice Aetna Policy that I had for 10 years cancelled and got thrown into Obamacare, which the initial start of that is another nightmare. 2018 rolls around around and the Healthcare MarketPlace sends me a letter telling me my 2016 taxes aren’t settled so I am not eligible to purchase a policy for 2018. Basically it took till July to get everything straightened out so my family had to go uncovered for 7 months. I called around looking for private insurance and it just doesn’t exist except for bogus policies that you never heard of and aren’t accepted anywhere! The only Insurer on the PA MarketPlace is Independence Blue Cross. I always new that Obamacare was put in place to Control the People – do something the Government doesn’t like and you are not eligible for plans. If Trump was not elected and put the brakes on everything – everybody working for a large company were next to be added, your employer would have handed you some amount of money and sent you to Obamacare. The big Corporations were behind it – they wanted to dump their employees, give them a fixed cost and their bottom line would have looked much better. Obamacare was the biggest scam perpetuated on the American People!