Thank you, Judge Roberts!
Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break.
But one insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, laid bare the taxes on its bills with a separate line item for “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.”
The new taxes on one customer’s bill added up to $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually, according to Kaiser Health News. It boosted the monthly premium from $322.26 to $345.40 for that individual.
The new taxes and fees include a 2 percent levy on every health plan, which is expected to net about $8?billion for the government in 2014 and increase to $14.3 billion in 2018.
There’s also a $2 fee per policy that goes into a new medical-research trust fund called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Insurers pay a 3.5 percent user fee to sell medical plans on the HealthCare.gov Web site.
ObamaCare supporters argue that federal subsidies for many low-income Americans will not only cover the taxes, but pay a big chunk of the premiums.
But ObamaCare taxes don’t stop with health-plan premiums.
Americans also will pay hidden taxes, such as the 2.3 percent medical-device tax that will inflate the cost of items such as pacemakers, stents and prosthetic limbs.
Those with high out-of-pocket medical expenses also will get smaller income-tax deductions.
Americans are currently allowed to deduct expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their annual income. The threshold jumps to 10 percent under ObamaCare, costing taxpayers about $15 billion over 10 years.
Then there’s the new Medicare tax.
Under ObamaCare, individual tax filers earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000 will pay an added 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on top of the existing 1.45 percent Medicare payroll tax. They’ll also pay an extra 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income, such as investment dividends, rental income and capital gains.
Man! You tea baggers just don’t get it. Costing taxpayers? Posh. It’s merely a deduction in the income the taxpayer is allowed to keep. Still a generous, nea, lavish amount.
Unless you work at McDonalds or Walmart of course. Those pirates need to subsidize the employee after tax wage program at a significantly higher rate.
Though the fees listed in the post are small, they could add up if there are enough of them. Also, the important part is the very principle that lets the fees/taxes exist for NOT buying something.
Remember: although the current penalty for being uncovered is $95 or 1% of income, whichever is greater, the penalty goes up over time. By 2016, it will be $695 per person, or 2.5% of income.
A freakin’ $700 penalty for NOT buying something, during a time of continued economic malaise for the middle class, when so many people have left the workforce or can only find part-time work. Yeah…that’ll go over well.
I mentioned this last week, but the taxes on our Jan premium are almost $40.
That’s not a small amount. I don’t have a breakdown, and I cannot find one online to see how it comes out to this amount, but that’s what it is.
My CA plan says the ACA taxes are 6% and Blue Shield keeps 2%
I have some fun stuff buried in the pie chart:
Transitional Reinsurance Tax @ $5.95 per member per month.
CA Exchange Tax @ $13.95 per member per month
$20 a month for two exclusive memberships, and of those, I pay $14 a month to Covered CA even though I can’t use their products
If every CA resident has health insurance it means some bureaucrats will be collecting 38M citizens X $14 = $532M per month floating down their revenue stream.
Remember: although the current penalty for being uncovered is $95 or 1% of income, whichever is greater, the penalty goes up over time. By 2016, it will be $695 per person, or 2.5% of income.
Funny thing: the IRS has no authority under ACA to actually bill you for this amount, only to withhold that amount from any expected refund(s). If you have no refund due, or owe the government, the IRS does not have the power to add it to the amount of tax you pay, nor to collect it later.
So, anyone who knows how to work with their IRS forms can file the new W-4 and change their withholding, which means they take home more money, and not have to pay any penalty for not getting insurance.
PROGRESS
Sorry Carin, you wanna play the game (and SCJ Roberts insists you do), ya gotta pay the vig.
Ya don’t want the men in blacked out suburbans and dark suits to come by and discuss it wich ya, do ya?
“Funny thing: the IRS has no authority under ACA to actually bill you for this amount,”
Not so funny thing, Obama can (and does) make up the ACA as he goes along.
Never imagine you can beat the house. The house always gets it’s money (continuing my Cosa Nostra theme…)
Not so funny thing, Obama can (and does) make up the ACA as he goes along.
That’s okay, he’s given everyone full and complete waivers from the requirements of ObamaCare, anyway.
14th Amendment, it’s AMAZING.
If he hasn’t, I will. I figure I have as much power to unilaterally amend legislation without any Congressional action as Obama does, since we’re no longer using the Constitution to decide these things…
this is why we can’t have nice things
not even an espresso maker?
I can hardly wait to see companies drop employee insurance and decide to just pay the fine.
Figuring the monthly premium per employee (and I know I’m low) is $300 per month, that’s $3,600 per year per employee. $2,000 fine < $3,600 means the company is up $1,600 per year per employee.*
*Admittedly, I'm going from memory and very possibly, I'm wrong about the fine structure.
me and my nespresso are gonna hunker down and not spend any monies all year
Yep. The employer mandate cancellations are gonna make the current 6 million individual mandate cancellations look like a picnic.
70 million? 80? 90?
Who knows how many people are going to get screwed? It may be that by Jan. 1, 2015 EVERYONE in the US has either been cancelled or knows someone that has.
happy, my son sent me a neat Teavana gift box. It has four different tea, an infuser and rock sugar. Ima give it a try tomorrow.
It may be that by Jan. 1, 2015 EVERYONE in the US
Pushed out past the mid-term elections, I note. (Illegally so goes without saying.) It’s not like the President would have a political reason for doing so, is it?
I predict that Obama will be leaning on the insurance companies to not put out the cancellation notices 60 days prior, just as they did the last time. (“We TOTALLY SWEARSIES that if you help us hide this bad news ONE MORE TIME we won’t prosecute you for screwing over your customers!”)
– It would be interesting if everyone just ask their employer/insurer point blank if they plan on dropping existing employer coverage next year. If they refuse to answer that will be your answer.
>Pushed out past the mid-term elections, I note.<
nah they'll start sending them aug/sept 2014
Hey, Merry Christmas, guys!
Hope you all had a good one.
“Teavana”
So like the tea transform you from a hungry trapped ghost to an egoless eternal?
Or do you just put on a plaid shirt and grunge out and drink conflict free coffee from a home made mug?
they’ll need to go to healthcare.gov to sign up before the end of 2014 as happened this year with the individual stuff.
oh look i spotted a bh
Hi bh! We miss you (at least I do!)
So like the tea transform you from a hungry trapped ghost to an egoless eternal?
I’m going for total consciousness. Why screw around, eh?
Satori or bust.
I really want an infuser
I just found out this year it’s teavana like nirvana
For years I pronounced it like Taco Cabana
I can be kind of a momo sometimes
gunga galunga.
It helps when you spell /blockquote with the e on the end. sigh.
Isn’t that a bit like saying MasterCard will take care of the interest on your Visa Card debt?
Merry Christmas bh.
Nice of you to pop in.
Ernst, to which I respond: “Hey workers, I’ll split the difference with you. How about an $1,800 bonus at the end of the year?” (I won’t mention the time I’m saving by not having to deal with insurance companies. And, if I’m big enough to have an HR department, well, there goes a benefits administrator.)
Bodhisattva all the way.
Hey bh,.
I see the fingers have thawed enough so you’re able to type.
What I find amusing is the assurances that the insurance subsidy will not be taxed, “because it is paid directly to the insurance company.”
Uh huh, sure…and “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”
After all, we know we can trust the administration to tell the truth and keeps its promises.
Hell Blake, you’re a real mensch.
Most of those highly skilled irreplaceable workers would have taken a $1k bonus and not known the difference.
Hell, Ernst, I expect a lot of companies to discontinue benefits and kick at least part of the health insurance premium back to their employees. That’s what the company my wife works for did when she went on my insurance.
I expect the same Blake.
I’m trying to figure how my tax got to $40.
The new taxes and fees include a 2 percent levy on every health plan, which is expected to net about $8?billion for the government in 2014 and increase to $14.3 billion in 2018.
There’s also a $2 fee per policy that goes into a new medical-research trust fund called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Insurers pay a 3.5 percent user fee to sell medical plans on the HealthCare.gov Web site.
I’m thinking my healthcare provider is tacking that 3.5 right on my bill, since our premiums were locked in for two years. So that’s 2% plus 3.5%. Our premium is about $500 –
So that’s $27 right there. Plus the $2 … unless that’s not PER plan, but per person on the plan? I’ve got 7, so that/s another $14.
At that point, the Obama administration blows the dust off the single-payer legislation they’ve had ready for just this very moment, and rides in to save the day.
Only question is if it happens before or after the 2014 elections…
I’d just like to ask:
Why is a projection of the likely effect of Obamacare on businesses, employment, and voters in general being based on the supposed employment conditions of ‘highly skilled irreplaceable workers’ at all?
If even 5% of the workers are not highly skilled and irreplaceable then we have a huge potential impact in votes and lost insurance coverage and exposure to higher priced lower quality policies on the exchanges.
So why is this stupid absolutist horse shit about the supposed need of businesses to retain ‘highly skilled irreplaceable workers’ above all other concerns, even being used to smugly dismiss the impact of Obamacare as a disaster with voting consequences?
How does identifying a fairly small segment of the employed that is supposedly insulated by circumstance from the expected impact of Obamacare going to prove that there is no issue of political consequence?
steve’s point is both extremely dumb and hopelessly myopic especially for someone claiming they want to help those who can’t otherwise help themselves. How do you help these people while ignoring and dismissing the hurt that will be done to them on the basis of an immunity to the expanded costs based on being classified as ‘highly skilled irreplaceable workers’ ?
And why were there so many exceptions cut out if it’s no big deal?
C’mon dude.
Hey, welcome back bh!
So how come no Steve or Dale chumpmunk comments on this thread?
Mom is making them wash the cars and clean their rooms.
That all depends on how the variables of Democrat arrogance and Republican incompetence interact.
Are the Republicans incompetent enough to run on fixing Obamacare? If so, are the Democrats arrogant enough to offer single payer as their alternative to the Republican fix? If so, are the Republicans incompetent enough to fail to remind voters at every opportunity the the Democrats previously promised that you could keep the plan you no longer have?