The Glade 4.0

Ummm... Congressional Democrats...

Are you new?

But in all fairness to them, they really didn't know what was in it until they passed it. Like opening Christmas presents! (Assuming that what you got for Christmas last year was herpes, a good kick square in the stones, and someone executing your dog).

_________________

Ezekiel 23:19-20 

_________________
The Dude abides.

Using the exact same variables:

Link



Therefore, if for some reason, this family was not to receive a subsidy, or only a partial subsidy, they would have to pay as much as $9,700 per year.

Furthermore, the "subsidy" is a tax credit. Healthcare insurance bills are monthly. They must, therefore, pay every month from Jan 2014 to December 2014 to be "covered" as far as the IRS is concerned. Then, when filing (likely sometime between Feb 2015 and April 2015) they would receive their subsidy (if eligible).

It should be noted that any gap in coverage, such as for, let's say, not being able to afford ~$808 per month ($9,700/12 months) could make them ineligible for subsidy.


Additionally, it should be noted that changing ANY household member (including children) to be a tobacco user notes that in most states they can have a tobacco surcharge on the premium rate ($9,700 dollars) of up to 50%, which is not eligible for subsidy. That would, therefore, make the premium rate $14,550, and the non-eligible portion for the family $6,223. Or $512 per month AFTER tax credit.

Given that just over 1 in 5 men and around 1 in 6 women smoke, we can safely say that many families would be effected by this surcharge. However, we can also figure in that 29% of those who live below the poverty level smoke, and that those are most likely to need subsidization, they would be further impacted by such a surcharge.


Finally, using the calculator, we'll note that if ANY coverage is offered from an employer, one is not likely to be a recipient of subsidy. Unless that coverage exceeds 9.5% of your income AND you are between 1x and 4x the federal poverty level. That means your portion of the premiums would have to cost, using that same $35,000 income level: $3,325 (or $277 per month).

The penalty [before it was unilaterally pushed back by the Executive branch] for not offering coverage is $2,000 per full-time employee. The penalty for not offering affordable coverage is $3,000 per full-time employee.

The math then becomes simple: if it costs me as an employer less than $2,000 per employee to make sure your portion is "affordable" (less than 9.5% of your gross salary), then I continue to offer benefits, including potentially expanding my share of the bill to reduce your share (provided that extension is less than $2,000). If it costs me more, I cease offering benefits altogether OR reduce salaries OR reduce your hours to less than 30.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Ok, so it's basically the same effect as a minimum wage increase. The employer has either pay $3,000, pay their share of the 9.5%, push you to part time, or fire you. The working poor that keep their full-time jobs will benefit, as they can get heavily subsidized health care regardless of whether their employer offers it or not.

This will be pretty interesting when they implement the penalty, because everyone will then be able to point to the people who insist McDonalds should pay $15/hour and say, "Well, here's what happens."

However, the assertion that it "helps nobody" is just BS.

Who, to your mind, is helped?

I mean, besides the insurance companies.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

- People with pre-existing conditions whose employers didn't offer health insurance before Obamacare.
- People whose employers start offering health coverage to avoid the tax. Yeah, McDonalds isn't going to do that but there are plenty of companies that were on the fence on whether or not to offer healthcare before, and avoiding a new $3,000/employee tax can push them over the edge.
- People with serious diseases that threatened to run into their insurance policy's lifetime payout caps.
- People below the 400% poverty line cutoff who don't get shunted to part time as a result. Healthcare prices went up, but this theoretical $35,000 family is receiving an 86% subsidy....health plan prices would have to have gone up by 714% for them to be worse off than before.

IF (and that's a big if) their employer suddenly offers insurance, (which is unlikely) they would have had that protection anyway.

No change.



$2,000 per employee. Which is $166 per month. No group insurance is that cheap, and those employers are not going to extremely unlikely to start offering insurance. Instead they will cut hours to <30 for all employees, or simply pay the penalty. In fact, the cuts to 30 hours or less have already started.

Net loss for employees.



I concur. This, however, raises the prices for everyone else AND did not require sweeping reform to pass.

Aggregate net negative, with some outliers.



They are receiving a potential subsidy of up to 86% and, what you're glossing over is, they must pay the premium monthly to receive an end of year credit, making them both 1) unlikely to actually acquire the coverage and 2) therefore unlikely to receive subsidization.

So likely net negative (due to the individual penalty) with the possibility of net positive.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Before Obamacare, an person with a pre-existing condition that did not receive healthcare from their employer could not get health insurance. Individual plans were allowed to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions which meant they weren't able to get insurance. Obamacare changed that so now this person can get insurance regardless of whether or not their employer starts offering it.

Also, I know no group insurance plan as cheap as the penalty, I was talking about employers who were on the fence before Obamacare was implemented. As in, they were considering maybe offering insurance, but overall it was a small net negative to do so. The extra per-employee fine for not offering insurance could easily tip the balance in favor of now offering care.

As for the subsidy, I'm having trouble finding an authoritative source, but what I am finding indicates it doesn't work that way.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/1001/Obamacare-101-how-the-federal-subsidy-works-video



http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/tax-realities-for-self-employed-who-get-obamacare-subsidies

So if it helps a handful of people it's worth 2.8 trillion? We could have bought insurance those people and left everyone else alone for that.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I never said that. I just hate, hate arguments, no matter what they're in support of or against, in the vein of "no, it actually has no benefits at all, and all the supporters are morons who are **** themselves." 99% of the time these arguments are BS and make you look like a moron. They also make the people who have legitimate arguments against the topic look crazy and stupid by association, and overall just really hurt your side's position.

If you don't like arguments you're probably in the wrong forum.

That aside I agree there are extremes on both sides. (There are people on the left who would insist that the cost/benefit doesn't matter as long as the benefit is there). However, that should not preclude the rest of us from having an honest conversation.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well when one person murders another for their wallet the first person is more financially stable but mentioning that there is a benefit in the action seems entirely pointless.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Xequecal:

Are you able to think globally? Can you predict, accurately at all, the economic fall out of this implementation and how this is going wash out in the long run? You're just looking at one slice of the pie, believing the government line, and not considering the horizontal impacts. Vertically, it almost looks as if they worked a miracle; horizontally, this benefits no one.

_________________

This. The program will be beneficial to some individuals and hurtful to others. Any rational person on either side of the aisle should be able to see this, even if they are too biased to admit it.

The question, of course, is whether the harm to some is worth the benefit to others. It does not appear to be, but time will tell.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

As a 27 year old Virginian, that chart scares the **** out of me. I really need to go back and wade through all the BS on healthcare.gov and figure out what it's going to cost me.

My employer just sent out our annual "Benefits Re-Enrollment" notifications.

The very first sentence in the email was (paraphrased))



And they weren't kidding.

My costs for the same coverage next year will be almost exactly twice as much as they are now, and according to the HR folks estimates, we will see similar increases next year as well.

People in the office with large families are totally screwed... One guy was nearly in tears saying he couldn't afford it...

Yup.. it's going to be awesome as the only income earner in the house with 4 children, one being in college.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

My costs have only increased by 29%, but health and wellness screening and participation have become mandatory, and cigarette smoking is now a firable offense. We've also been asked, across all divisions in my business group, to reduce full-time salaried employees by 30% over the first two quarters of our next fiscal year.

_________________

Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Ditto. Despite our HR phasing it in over the last two years, offering biometric discounts that Rynar mentioned above and being self-insured it is still crazy. Probably right around 75% combined increase over the last two years and new penalties for those who are married (encouraging the spouse to buy insurance through their company instead).

_________________

It's a liberal conspiracy to ruin the establishment of marriage since gay marriage never got legalized.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

What's causing the huge price increases for group plans, anyways? It was already illegal for them to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions so they didn't get hit by that part at all.

Removal of lifetime cap and staying on coverage until middle age (26) and switching to electronic records and providing mental health coverage.

_________________

It's the difference between insurable costs and pre-paying for all anticipated care.

_________________

Ezekiel 23:19-20 

We're on the MD state health plan through my wife, so I haven't seen any substantial changes. Folks here in my office are hurting, though.