Obamacare To Cost Middle Class Families $15,000 A Year - by Paul Joseph Watson

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, December 23, 2009



Families struggling in the midst of a deep recession who earn a combined total greater than $88,200 and don’t have their health care covered by their employer will be hit with a mandatory annual fee of about $15,000 according to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the final Senate Obamacare bill.



As we highlighted yesterday, the health care bill would introduce a raft of new taxes that would inevitably lead to higher costs that would be passed on to the public. A Boston Globe analysis revealed that there were at least 19 new taxes contained in the legislation which is set to be passed on Christmas Eve.

On top of this, a CBO analysis identifies five facts about the bill that will financially devastate families with an annual income greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be forced to buy government-approved health insurance and anyone earning a middle class wage will have to pay for it out of their own pocket. Federal subsidies will only be provided for people who are not offered coverage by their employer and earn below the 400 percent poverty level.

Employers will not be required to offer their workers coverage, being subject to a $750 annual penalty if they fail to do so, a figure most analysts say is not high enough to prevent employers from dropping their plans, meaning that more people will be forced to buy government health care.

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“The Senate health care bill gives employers two powerful incentives to stop offering health insurance coverage to their workers,” writes Terry Jeffrey. “First, if an employer does offer coverage, its lower-wage workers will lose the federal insurance subsidy they would otherwise get. Secondly, if an employer does not offer coverage, the $750-per-worker fine it faces will be far less than the premiums it would pay if it did offer coverage.”

Costs are also set to soar as a result of insurance companies being hit with federal mandates that increase their risk.

“Policies purchased through the exchanges (or directly from insurers) would have to meet several requirements: In particular, insurers would have to accept all applicants, could not limit coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, and could not vary premiums to reflect differences in enrollees’ health,” according to the CBO.

This will inevitably force insurance companies to pass higher costs on to the public.

As a consequence of all these factors, families whose employers drop their plan will be forced to buy it on their own – at a cost of over $15,000 dollars a year.

“Average premiums per policy in the nongroup market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal,” states the CBO.

Jeffrey predicts that families being hit with a federally mandated $15,000-per-year insurance bill will provoke a “rebellion”.

“When that happens, the liberals will not say: We made a mistake. We never should have forced families out of their employer-based health insurance and required them to purchase a $15,000 policy,” he writes. “They will say: We told you so. We cannot trust these greedy insurance companies. We need a single-payer system so the government can provide everyone with health care. Just like they did in the Soviet Union.”