One thing I don't understand. This Affordable Healthcare thing was already compromised and turned into law. It was looked at by those 9 in funny black frocks and found not to sodomise the constitution.
Months ago.
So why is this a thing now?
Compromised? It was rammed through without a single Republican vote.
The Supreme Court had to twist logic into pretzels to justify taxing someone for not engaging in commerce.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/chi...-tax-it-tax-its-law-its-not-unlawful-break-it
It's a thing now because the entire thing starts on January 1st and there is no rolling it back once the subsidies begin.
How about the supply of doctors?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypi...-a-20000-doctor-shortage-is-set-to-quintuple/
So let's see:
Insurance mandated by law.
10,000 pages of new regulations.
More patients.
Less doctors.
Each newly minted doctor starts out $170,000 in debt and must charge big dollars or go bankrupt. (And student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy, so their life is over essentially if they go that route)
Government will pay the rest of a silver plan beyond a certain % of a person's income thus removing any natural limits on how high the price can go.
Bearing all this in mind, will insurance rates go up or down over time based on the principles of supply and demand?
Then we get to the issue of calculating Obamacare subsidies.
It is purely based off of how much money you made that year and how many people are in your family.
You pay the premiums all year and get the tax credit subsidy the following year as a refund.
I doubt you can get an upfront loan to pay for the insurance in expectation of the subsidy 1 year later because you have to earn a certain amount of money to qualify for it. And it scales quite rapidly depending on whether you make $12,000 or $24,000.
For this math challenged country, it will be a struggle to line up people's expectations with reality.
The biggest subsidy and hardest calculation is for the older working poor.
They could spend thousands of dollars on health insurance all year expecting to get a refund that pays for 95% of it, but if they get laid off in say October, and only make $11,200 that year and don't reach 100% of the poverty level ($11,500 if single), they get $0 at tax time instead of $3000 or $4000.
If you have a kid, the poverty rate you have to earn past goes up by $4000, so an unplanned pregnancy might mean the difference in your refund check being $2500 or $0.
I guess you could just not claim the kid as a dependent at tax time, but what about someone with 7 kids doing this to go from 9% to 2% subsidy by leaving off 3 kids?
Does not claiming a kid lower the poverty level that applies to you?
And the poverty rate is indexed to inflation, so if you are right on the line make sure to demand a $.10 raise every year. Have to pay attention or you get clobbered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
Heh, Alaska and Hawaii have different poverty rates than the rest of the country.
Does anyone even know for sure yet whether the unemployed get hit with the tax penalty yet?
I've looked around and all I can get is "depends"
If any of these examples are in error, it is not obvious to me where the error lies. Doubtless there are rules about these very things somewhere in those 10,000 pages.
Maybe the answers are in here
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/29/2682291/obamacare-questions-2/
Seems like 1 more surprise bankruptcy for poor Americans to me unless they are skilled at math and planning ahead.