l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 by Jammie
What would Christmas be without a massive lump of coal from the Scrooge in
the White House?
Here comes the ObamaCare tax bill.
The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit
Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on
their income-tax bills.
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.
Meanwhile, in a stunning development, since enough people didn’t sign up
for this abomination, Obama graciously has extended the enrollment period to
January 1. At this point it may as well just be an indefinite enrollment
period.
The Christmas Eve deadline to sign up for ObamaCare wasn’t really a
deadline after all.
The Obama admininstration announced late Tuesday that people unable to
obtain coverage by midnight through Healthcare.gov might still be able to
get insurance by Jan. 1. The announcement comes after the administration
already pushed back the enrollment deadline by a day.
“Sometimes despite your best efforts, you might have run into delays
caused by heavy traffic to Healthcare.gov, maintenance periods, or other
issues with our systems that prevented you from finishing the process on
time,” a post on Healthcare.gov said. “If this happened to you, don’t
worry – we still may be able to help you get covered as soon as Jan. 1.”
The post tells consumers to contact the marketplace call center and
explain that technical difficulties prevented them from getting covered
under ObamaCare for the new year.
They’re so helpful. |
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