Posted on 06/20/2015 12:23:53 AM PDT by Libloather
With the U.S. Supreme Court set to rule on a key element of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the financial impact of repealing the health law on the economy.
Striking down Obamacare, as the federal insurance program is called, would increase the nation's budget deficit by a net $137 billion over a 10-year period, according to the nonpartisan CBO, which analyzes budgetary and economic issues on behalf of lawmakers.
The total budget gap between 2016 and 2025 would rise by $353 billion as a result of eliminating Obamacare, according to the CBO, which produced the report the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
The “cost” is the Feds getting less tax revenue.
Not a true cost, and is worth only $13.7 billion/yr.
Congress pisses that away before their chaplain finishes his opening prayer.
The cost of freedom is high.
Worth it.
If one doesn't think so, one should consider an alternative nation to live.
Cuba or Venezuela, perhaps...
But the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, as the Supreme Court discerned two years ago, primarily exists as a severely regressive tax on the working poor. It contains a tax on all not-excluded households with income (excluding welfare payments of course) exceeding the sum of the standard deduction and the personal exemption (that’s less than a full-time, minimum-wage job). That tax amounts to 2.5% of income (in addition to all other taxes) with a minimum of $695 per adult and $347.50 per child under 18 years of age (up to $2085 per household). The exempt include enrolled in a certain welfare program called Medicaid, those who get health insurance from their jobs (most of the middle class), illegal aliens, and incarcerated criminals. A maximum to this tax prevents the super-wealthy from paying the full 2.5%. For a single parent with four children (not a qualifying widow or widower) under 65 years of age earning just $13,050 per year of nominal income, the $2085 annual tax amounts to a whopping 15.97% surtax rate. But that’s not all.
The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act also includes an increase in the minimum wage for those employed at least 30 hours per week without qualifying health insurance (again, the same working poor) at establishments with 50 or more employees. This increase amounts to $2000 per year, and all of it goes directly to taxes before the employee even sees it. This tax structure perversely prevents the aspiring working poor from attaining that full-time, minimum-wage job. So our single parent gets $13,050 per year of nominal income but earns that plus 7.65% plus $2,000 per year plus federal unemployment tax ($56 for private for-profit employers) (plus state unemployment tax and worker compensation tax not included). That’s $16,130.43 in earnings but $9986.68 after federal taxes, an effective federal tax rate of 38.087% versus 14.569% before the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act.
These higher taxes leave this family with far less money with which to obtain healthcare, however such medicine and procedures may improve the lives of its members. Hence the Congress named the act properly, the Patient Protection from Affordable Care Act, as it prevents prospective patients from attaining the capacity of affording healthcare. For the middle class, the Act provides an entire bureaucratic labyrinth to prevent access to meaningful, appropriate healthcare as well as additional taxes (many of them hidden more discretely) and high prices to decrease affordability of even that pittance still covered.
So we can eliminate this ridiculous regressive tax on the working poor and increase taxes (or better, cut spending, a concept anathema to the Congress for the past six decades) to compensate for the revenue loss. Which taxes should we increase? How about eliminating the numerous obscure tax breaks designed to benefit a few wealthy influential political donors? Or drastically simplifying the tax code. Get rid of some subsidies and corporate welfare delivered perversely through the tax system.
The sh!twagon is full and only a matter of time until it collapses.
Ousting the 0bama’s and their relative leeches would help. The trips alone would save trillions.
The most expensive people ever.
Except that the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act doesn’t save children; it kills them in very large numbers. In many states, some or even all plans sold on the exchanges shunt money into a fund used to kill unborn babies. The money so accumulated can fund enormous numbers of dead babies. And the feds ensured that prospective buyers of health insurance on the exchanges cannot know whether their plan participates in these funds.
That says nothing of its special free service to women of chemical warfare against babies recently conceived. Unfortunately delivery of live babies doesn’t get this favorable coverage under the Act. Those babies born alive require as a penalty more expensive separate policies for their first two years.
Moreover, Congress based the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act on a severely regressive tax against the working poor, sucking thousands of dollars per year from minimum-wage workers but giving them nothing in return. This severe taxation effectively prevents children in non-affluent families from accessing life-saving health care, extending the war of this Administration on women and children. And yes, with a million dead babies every year, make no mistake: this is a genocidal war.
14B$ a year is in the noise.
Of course the little fact that the drug companies operate on a 20% profit margin while most other companies have a 3 to 7% profit margin is irrelevant.
You don’t get what I meant.
I meant if it saved one child, by ENDING it...
Sounds like a bargain!
Do you have a reference or a source for the statement that babies require more expensive separate policies for their first two years. This is the first I am hearing about this.
Amen
I’ll even contribute.
http://nypost.com/2013/12/01/baby-not-covered-under-obamacare-family-plan/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3097175/posts
It also may affect certain families with income ranges suggestive of potential eligibility for the State Children's Health Insurance Program who lack actual eligibility or previous and ongoing enrollment, especially if the exchange does not send sufficient information to make a determination to the correct office in the proper time.
“how does cutting subsidies for people twice the poverty limit cost money?”
there you go being logical and rational again! Lib’s arguments are rarely either.
thanks for the breakdown on how the CBO determined that something that is a net loss would cost money to eliminate. I was on the verge of going to cbsnews to read their spin.
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