Obamacare: Even Better Than We Thought.

[mostpost]

Originally Posted by TBD

Tax refunds may get hit due to health law credits.






http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=AP&date=20140824&id=17879199&gt1 =33009

This says that if you underestimate your income for the coming year, and if you receive subsidies for your exchange purchased health plan as a result; your refund may be reduced in order to reduce your subsidy.

In other words; based on your projected earnings you received a $100 a month subsidy for the year. Based on your actual earnings you were only eligible for a $75 a month subsidy. Therefore you owe the government $300 ($25 x 12). Why should you not pay that money?


Tax refunds may get hit due to health law credits.
is a poorly thought our statement.
Some Tax refunds may get hit due to health law credits.
is better.
Best of all would be a small percentage of Tax refunds may get hit due to health law credits.

If you have insurance through your employer or if you buy insurance through the exchanges and receive no subsidies it does not apply. If you purchase insurance privately it does not apply.

Only if you are receiving subsidies and have an unexpected increase in your annual salary should this worry you. If your salary does increase you should expect to pay a greater percentage of your health care costs. You should not be surprised if the government wishes to recoup some (ALL) of the subsidy you were not entitled to.

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by TBD

Tax refunds may get hit due to health law credits.






http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=AP&date=20140824&id=17879199&gt1 =33009

This is going to be a major PR failure for ObamaCare, and there are going to be a lot of ticked off people. And the people that are going to take a big hit are working people on the low end of the income scale. And there are more problems than discussed there.

Concern about the complex connection between the health care law and taxes has increased recently, after the Internal Revenue Service released drafts of new forms to administer health insurance tax credits next filing season.

The forms set up a final accounting that ensures each household is getting the correct tax credit that the law provides. Various factors are involved, including income, family size, where you live and the premiums for a "benchmark" plan in your community.

Even experts find the forms highly complicated, requiring month-by-month computations for some taxpayers.

Taxpayers accustomed to filing a simplified 1040EZ will not be able to do so if they received health insurance tax credits this year.

The people that qualified for subsidies are generally lower income and not financially sophisticated. The first they will know about this is when the IRS sends them a bill next year after auditing their returns.

There are also people who did not have any changes in income that will have to pay back subsidies because they signed up in good faith and were told that they qualified for a subsidy. Those subsidies could not be verified because the back end of the system had not been built. If the IRS determines that the subsidies should not have been applied, those people will have to pay them back.

The next enrollment period begins in November, 2014, and it is still not known if the back end system, including subsidy verification, will be operational by then.

[davew]

Originally Posted by Clocker

This is going to be a major PR failure for ObamaCare, and there are going to be a lot of ticked off people. And the people that are going to take a big hit are working people on the low end of the income scale. And there are more problems than discussed there.



The people that qualified for subsidies are generally lower income and not financially sophisticated. The first they will know about this is when the IRS sends them a bill next year after auditing their returns.

There are also people who did not have any changes in income that will have to pay back subsidies because they signed up in good faith and were told that they qualified for a subsidy. Those subsidies could not be verified because the back end of the system had not been built. If the IRS determines that the subsidies should not have been applied, those people will have to pay them back.

The next enrollment period begins in November, 2014, and it is still not known if the back end system, including subsidy verification, will be operational by then.

read somewhere over 7 million policys are subsidized - if only 5 million policys are paid for the entire year, there will be quite a few with adjustments (cough.. fraud .. cough)

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by davew

read somewhere over 7 million policys are subsidized - if only 5 million policys are paid for the entire year, there will be quite a few with adjustments (cough.. fraud .. cough)

From the article linked above:

Nearly 7 million households have gotten health insurance tax credits, and major tax preparation companies say most of those consumers appear to be unaware of the risk.

"More than a third of tax credit recipients will owe some money back, and (that) can lead to some pretty hefty repayment liabilities," said George Brandes, vice president for health care programs at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service.

[classhandicapper]

One thing is 100% certain. This plan was nowhere near ready for prime time.

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

One thing is 100% certain. This plan was nowhere near ready for prime time.

That would be "is" nowhere near ready for prime time.

The employer mandate, supposedly vital to the sustainability of the program, is still a distant (and improbable) promise. The individual mandate has been made virtually impotent. It's harder to unsubscribe from junk mail from your bank than to get a waiver from the individual mandate. The back end of the system, supposedly coordinating between ObamaCare, the IRS and insurance companies, is still dreamware. And the insurance companies are getting all their ducks in a row in preparation for ravaging the risk corridors at the earliest opportunity.

The CBO originally estimated that 30 million people would still be uninsured after ObamaCare was fully implemented. I'd like to see a revised estimate of that number. Some firm numbers on rate increases should be made public in another month, just before the elections. And without the mandates to prop it up, Obama is going to have to ask Congress from more funding for this little bastage child of his. Things are only going to get worse.

[incoming]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

One thing is 100% certain. This plan was nowhere near ready for prime time.

The republicans tossed President Obama a "lifeline"(1 year delay) before the roll out. Of course, he and the media turn it into something political. Kind of funny if you are the type of person that likes to see the country go down the toilet.

[dartman51]

Originally Posted by incoming

The republicans tossed President Obama a "lifeline"(1 year delay) before the roll out. Of course, he and the media turn it into something political. Kind of funny if you are the type of person that likes to see the country go down the toilet.

The sad thing is, we have some on this board, that appear to feel exactly that way. All ISIS or ISIL, whatever they are being called today, need to do, is have patience. Give the Liberals a few more years and ISIS/ISIL won't have to fight, or sneak, their way into this country, they'll just fly in and be welcomed with open arms, and a hand shake.

[Tom]

Once ISIS gets here and lives with libs for a few years, they go back home.
No doubt in my mind.

[davew]

Originally Posted by Tom

Once ISIS gets here and lives with libs for a few years, they go back home.
No doubt in my mind.

or cut off their heads and move into their homes

[JustRalph]

Jerry Brown will invite them to California

[Clocker]

The state of Florida reports that actual enrollment in ObamaCare is almost 25% lower than the official federal number. Some of that is from errors in the original count, and the rest from people who signed up and never made a payment or who stopped making payments.

Florida’s Obamacare enrollment is now over 220,000 lower than the Obama administration’s most recent tally, according to a report from the state insurance department.

The Obama administration hasn’t released updated Obamacare enrollment statistics since May, when the Department of Health and Human Services put the number of Florida sign-ups at 983,775 — but the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation says that now, just 762,723 Floridians have health insurance through the exchange.

[Clocker]

Three branches of the Federal Reserve have reported survey results showing significant negative impacts of ObamaCare on employment.

Three Federal Reserve Banks – in Philadelphia, New York and Atlanta – have released business surveys that confirm what many of us have been predicting. The new health law is discouraging a significant number of firms from hiring and is also pushing workers into part-time, rather than full time jobs. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia survey of business in its region finds that because of Obamacare:

• 18.2% of employers say they cut workers versus 3.0 percent who hired more.
• 18.2% say the proportion of part-time workers is higher versus 1.5% who say it is lower.
• 13.7% reported more outsourcing to other firms versus 3% with less outsourcing.

The New York Fed found that because of Obamacare:

• 21% of manufacturers say they are reducing employment, while 3% are increasing their workforce.
• Among manufacturers, 19.3% say they are increasing the proportion of part-time work, while 3.5% say they are reducing it.

An Atlanta Fed poll earlier this month found that 34% of businesses planned to hire more part-time workers than in the past, mostly because of a rise in the relative costs of their full-time colleagues.

[JustRalph]

This is terrible news but was predicted




18.2% of employers say they cut workers versus 3.0 percent who hired more.
18.2% say the proportion of part-time workers is higher versus 1.5% who say it is lower.
13.7% reported more outsourcing to other firms versus 3% with less outsourcing.
The New York Fed found that because of Obamacare:

21% of manufacturers say they are reducing employment, while 3% are increasing their workforce.
Among manufacturers, 19.3% say they are increasing the proportion of part-time work, while 3.5% say they are reducing it.

[Clocker]

ObamaCare is just one part of the government policies that are making it harder and harder to find work. From Forbes:

Obamacare comes on top of other things the government is also doing to make job prospects dim. That’s the conclusion of a new academic paper by Stephen J. Davis, of the University of Chicago, and John Haltiwanger, of the University of Maryland. As summarized by Binyamin Appelbaum at The New York Times, the paper argues that

“the share of Americans with jobs has declined because the labor market has stagnated in recent decades — fewer people losing or leaving jobs, fewer people landing new ones. This dearth of creative destruction, the authors argue, is the result of long-term trends including a slowdown in small business creation and the rise of occupational licensing.”

Further, both trends are the result of unwise government polices:

“The cost of training workers has increased, partly because the share of all workers who require government licenses has grown by one estimate from about 5 percent in the 1950s to 29 percent in 2008. This discourages hiring. So do legal changes that have made it more difficult to fire employees”, the paper says.

"...fewer people losing or leaving jobs..."

So, contrary to the brilliant analysis of world famous economist Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare is not freeing people from "job lock". People with employer provided health insurance are keeping their jobs, because the alternative means having to buy ObamaCare.