Nearly 6 million Americans — most of them in the middle class — will face a tax penalty for not carrying medical coverage once President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law is fully in place, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.
The new estimate amounts to an inconvenient fact for the administration, a reminder of what critics see as broken promises.
The numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office are significantly higher than a previous projection by the same office in 2010, shortly after the law passed.
The earlier estimate found 4 million people would be affected in 2016, when the penalty is fully in effect. The difference — 2 million people— represents a 50 percent increase.
That’s still only a sliver of the population, given that more than 150 million people currently are covered by employer plans. Nonetheless, in his first campaign for the White House, Obama pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.
And the budget office analysis found that nearly 80 percent of those who’ll face the penalty would be making up to or less than five times the federal poverty level. Currently that would work out to $55,850 or less for an individual and $115,250 or less for a family of four.
Average penalty: about $1,200 in 2016.
“The bad news and broken promises from Obamacare just keep piling up,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who wants to repeal the law.
Starting in 2014, virtually every legal resident of the U.S. will be required to carry health insurance or face a tax penalty, with exemptions for financial hardship, religious objections and certain other circumstances. Most people will not have to worry about the requirement since they already have coverage through employers, government programs like Medicare or by buying their own policies.
A spokeswoman for the Obama administration said 98 percent of Americans will not be affected by the tax penalty — and suggested that those who will be should face up to their civic responsibilities.
“This (analysis) doesn’t change the basic fact that the individual responsibility policy will only affect people who can afford health care but choose not to buy it,” said Erin Shields Britt of the Health and Human Services Department. “We’re no longer going to subsidize the care of those who can afford to buy insurance but make a choice not to buy it.”
The budget office said most of the increase in its estimate is due to changes in underlying projections about the economy, incorporating the effects of new federal legislation, as well as higher unemployment and lower wages.
The Supreme Court upheld Obama’s law as constitutional in a 5-4 decision this summer, finding that the insurance mandate and the tax penalty enforcing it fall within the power of Congress to impose taxes. The penalty will be collected by the IRS, just like taxes.
The budget office said the penalty will raise $6.9 billion in 2016. Read more in Star Ledger.
Being as the US Supreme Court had stated that the penalty is a TAX will I be able to deduct it on my income tax forms????
For the uninformed, this is referring to ObamaCare.And this is only the beginning of what’s coming. The liberal media is only starting to admit how much this will cost us in taxes.
But wait, most of the regulations under ObamaCare haven’t even been written yet. They are in the middle of doing it now. They only wrote about 13,000 pages of regulations so far (last I heard – a few weeks ago). All these rules and regulations will be a nightmare for businesses, and especially small businesses – you know – the ones that hire you and me (or the shver and the wife).
Businesses will not be able to afford these new costs and mandates, and penalties (taxes). Employees will be fired.
KFC recently announced that ObamaCare will take away 50% of their profits. That’s huge.
People have no clue what’s coming our way when ObamaCare is fully implemented. There’s a reason most of ObamaCare won’t be implemented until after the election. If people found out now (before the election) how ObamaCare would affect us all, Obama would be at 20% in the polls.
Obamacare is the worst thing that ever happened to this country! Does anyone here know what socialized medicine is like? Yeah, free health care- but horrible care that ends up killing more people than it heals! If top doctors make the same salary as the less talented dr.s, there is NO incentive for the doctors to get more training and do their best work- face it folks! Money is a big incentive! Look at health care in Canada- find out from friends and relatives that live there- they will tell you what REALLY goes on in hospitals!
I am constantly seeing public school kids with wristbands from Paul Kimball. Why? Because of an ear infection, stomach ache, the typical things that middle class kids go the doctor for. These lower income kids do not have health insurance and hospitals are not allowed to send them with our treatment. Isn’t it be less expensive for society to make sure they can go to a doctor without running up emergency room expenses the the State of NJ has to pay? The way I see it, the Affordable Health Care Act efficiently shifts the cost from the state toward the federal government while maintaining the basic structure of American health care.
If you are on jersey care, you are on socialized medicine. You don’t pay a dime. Do you have any issues with the care?
this is just one of the first steps to the destruction of the USA & its government before it collapses
be prepared for all your rights & freedoms to be taken away slowly but surely-not in one shot-& soon WE will not be able to live in the USA as frum yidden. all our rights & freedoms are being taken from us one at a time & the USA is about to become what used to be communist russia
pack your bags NOW & head for Eretz Yisroel, while the pressure is not so hard & before america is attacked by iran. for then it will be too late & everyone will be leaving in poverty, wishing they had left-now-when they were told.
BOTTOM LINE:this is all the work of Hashem & the choice is yours if you wish to leave now or wait & suffer ahead C”V
i wish everyone a gmar chasima tova ahead
ok american so your going to vote him back in ???
“If you are on jersey care, you are on socialized medicine. You don’t pay a dime. Do you have any issues with the care?”
Ummmmm……… Have you spoken to anyone who is on Jersey Care? They are very limited as to which doctors they can see, and all the specialists that accept Jersey Care are from the lowest 10% quality-wise. Everyone on Jersey Care knows that if you want to see a decent specialist, you need to pay out of pocket. You heard that? OUT OF POCKET. Jersey Care does not cover decent specialists.
Also, around the country, states are cutting different services from their Medicaid programs, because there simply isn’t enough money anymore.
When EVERYONE is on socialized medicine (with ObamaCare), people will wake up and realize how we’ve been hoodwinked into accepting “free healthcare for all”. Yea, right.
#6 Have you heard of checks and balances? Freedom of religion is in the Constitution. No gentile nation that has a law like the US First Amendment. The Roberts Court will be known as the First Amendment Court, so it won’t happen today.
You will know when America collapses. Most republics collapse when the executive branch supplants the legislature. Congress remains supreme. We have an additional check in the judiciary. THe US will be in trouble when that branch will no longer have the final say over Constitutional rights. We are not even close.
Andrew Jackson flaunted the Court and had the Succession Crisis in 1837 when South Carolina issued a bill of nullification over the federal tariff. The Republicans flaunted Dred Scott (which was an incorrect ruling anyway) and the country actually collapsed. It will take more than some legislation that you do not like, rather a constitutional crisis, for America to collapse.
It took the Roman republic, with its checks and balances and separations of power about 500 years before it turned into the Principate, which was essentially an executive dictatorship.
The greatest American invention in government was the creation of a single man executive, unheard of in previous republics. The second greatest innovation was judicial review of the legislature. The idea that a Court can rule the act of a sovereign legislature unconstitutional was also unheard of. Nothing has changed. Even though our executive has increase his power over the century, checks and balances are working the way they were intended.
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Just vote Obama in for the freebees! They will last forever, someone else will pick up the tab, just demand your share of the freebees!!
Most states require you to have car insurance, right? I mean at least here in NJ if you dont have car insurance then you can be fined and possibly put into jail. So why is it when one says we must have health insurance its so terrible? Just wondering…
To: jh
That is the point! The states make that decision NOT the Federal Government. The only way ObamaCare was passed by the supreme court was they changed the “penalty” to a “tax”.
jh: If I choose not to own a car, I am not forced to purchase car insurance. its my choice. There is no choice with obama care.
my dentist once told me that he dosn’t accept Jersey care because they pay him less per patient than he pays his hygeniest. the only way he would be able to accept it would be to hire a hygenist and a second dentist who’d be willing to work at minimum just for the jersey care patients and since he can’t find anyone good willing to work for that low a wage he can’t accept it. Thats the kind of care u get with jersey care. that’s what we’ll have under obamacare.