l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 CBO: 7 million to lose employer-based insurance when ACA rules take effect
February 7, 2013 by Michael Laprarie
But don’t worry – your family will be able to buy health insurance through
a government exchange for a mere $20,000 a year!
As much as I would like to call this fiction, it isn’t. The Affordable
Care Act health insurance mandate and penalty regulations are confusing and
ridiculous.
An employer must offer each employee “affordable” coverage (meaning the
employee’s premium contribution is less than 9.5% of their total household
income) if the business has 50 or more full time employees. The employer
must offer coverage to children of an employee who are under 26 years of age
, but they do not have to make it “affordable.” And they do not have to
offer any coverage for the employee’s spouse.
Starting with the 2012 Form W-2, employers with greater than 250 employees
will be required to report the total amount (employer plus employee
contributions) of each employee’s health care benefits. All employers will
be required to report this starting in the 2013 tax year. Supposedly this
will allow employees to estimate what they would pay if they lost their
employer contribution subsidy and chose to continue the same coverage under
COBRA. But there is probably a more sinister motive – an incentive to tax
employer health contributions as a part of a worker’s earned income. The
Kansas City Star reports, “The tax break for employer-paid health benefits
equals about $180 billion a year in potential tax revenue. Analysts say that
is worth 80 percent more than the tax break for home mortgage interest
deductions.”
Now let’s look at that “9.5% of total household income” number. The most
current median household income estimate is around $52,700 per year; 9.5%
of this number is roughly $5,000. According to the Kaiser Foundation, the
employee share of an annual individual health insurance premium averaged $
951 (roughly $80/month) in 2012. But under the ACA’s new definition, an “
affordable” employee contribution could very well be five times that amount
, or more as household income increases.
Right now, most employers take advantage of group rates that allow them to
offer the best possible rates to employees and their families. But under
the new ACA rules, “affordable” takes on an entirely new meaning, which,
to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, does not seem to be what the government wants
us to think it means. In fact, this new definition of affordable seems to
give insurers an enormous amount of room for rate hikes. It also seems to
allow employers to shift employer/employee contributions more heavily toward
employees, and to incentivize the discontinuation of reasonably-priced
coverage for family members.
So under the new ACA rules, an employee could end up paying several times
what he is paying now for coverage. And coverage for the rest of the family
could be priced so high that he has to decline participation. As long as
insurance is available – regardless of actual cost – the employer will be
in compliance. Or the employer may choose to forgo offering employee
insurance altogether and simply opt to pay the penalties. This is certainly
an attractive option if insurance rates continue to skyrocket. I’m
actually surprised that the estimated number of insureds who will lose
employer-provided coverage isn’t even higher.
Of course the solution to this problem is supposed to be the government
insurance exchanges, which theoretically would provide working families with
access to fairly-priced health insurance that can be purchased individually
. But in reality, the ACA rules provide virtually nothing to help working
middle class families that find themselves priced out of employer-provided
coverage, but with an income level that is insufficient to afford individual
policies yet too great to qualify for premium subsidies or penalty
exemptions:
Without being included in the employer’s contribution, the family
health-care insurance coverage will be off the chart, leaving the spouse and
kids to fend for themselves.
[Gottwals] added, “Furthermore, if the employee’s premium is deemed ‘
affordable’ because it is below 9.5 percent of the employee’s W-2 wages,
the non-working spouse and children will be denied access to federal
subsidies to buy healthcare in the Exchanges. Hence, if the employer offers
‘unaffordable’ coverage to the spouse and kids, the spouse and kids are
precluded from federal assistance” … This is because, if the spouse is not
offered healthcare, he or she can actually get a federal subsidy to buy
coverage in an Obamacare exchange. Whereas, if the spouse is offered “
unaffordable” coverage by an employer, the spouse is denied federal subsidy
assistance.
… “After the regulations issued in the last month, the plan appears to
be a penalty against marriage and a message to many employers to not bother
even offering healthcare to spouses. And it still leaves 460,000 kids
uninsured.”
The Federal and state subsidies, which would total around $5000 a year for
an average family, are still not a very good deal, since they are mostly in
the form of income tax credits, rather than cash credits toward monthly
premiums. And those premiums? Look out — in its Final Notice for the
rules governing the penalties for individuals without a qualifying insurance
plan, the IRS used a premium cost estimate of $20,000 a year for a family
of five to calculate costs in the document’s examples. And that’s for the
lowest (“bronze”) tier of available coverage options. I don’t even want
to know what they think the Platinum plan will cost. And yes, the IRS is
now in charge of administering your health insurance. I’m still wrapping
my head around that one.
But the good news is that the new IRS rules also contain clarification of
the numerous exemptions that may keep an individual or his family from
paying the non-compliance penalty: incarceration, undocumented immigration
status, religious objection, temporary transition between jobs/temporary
unemployment, health insurance cost (for the employee) already more than 8%
of family income, income too low to pay Federal income tax, member of an
Indian tribe, etc. In fact, the CBO is now estimating that these exemptions
will result in only 2% of Americans actually meeting the penalty
requirements. Unfortunately that 2% will consist primarily of working
middle class Americans.
The Kaiser Foundation says that employer-provided family health insurance
plans already have an average cost of around $15,700 a year. With a very
real chance of losing employer benefits, and a projected cost of $20,000 a
year if a family of five has to buy its own insurance, it is painfully clear
that the future offered by the Affordable Care Act will be anything but “
affordable.”
Say … anyone remember something about an average family’s health insurance
costing $2000 a year less after the Affordable Care Act was fully
implemented? Nah, me neither. Must have been my imagination.
But hey, did you hear that The Biebs and Rihanna might have ‘hooked up’
last year behind Selena’s back? | p**j
发帖数: 7063 | 2 早说过无数次了，保证人人有饭吃的制度，最后人人没饭吃。保证人人有医保的制度，
最后人人看不上病。
through
and
household
【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: CBO: 7 million to lose employer-based insurance when ACA rules take effect
: February 7, 2013 by Michael Laprarie
: But don’t worry – your family will be able to buy health insurance through
: a government exchange for a mere $20,000 a year!
: As much as I would like to call this fiction, it isn’t. The Affordable
: Care Act health insurance mandate and penalty regulations are confusing and
: ridiculous.
: An employer must offer each employee “affordable” coverage (meaning the
: employee’s premium contribution is less than 9.5% of their total household
: income) if the business has 50 or more full time employees. The employer
| g***y
发帖数: 1268 | 3 Milton Friedman: "A society which aims for Equality before Liberty will end
up with neither Equality nor Liberty....You can only aim at equality by
giving some people the right to take things from others. And what
ultimately happens when you aim at equality is that A and B decide what C
shall do for D, except that they take a little bit of a commission off on
the way!"
【在 p**j 的大作中提到】
: 早说过无数次了，保证人人有饭吃的制度，最后人人没饭吃。保证人人有医保的制度，
: 最后人人看不上病。
:
: through
: and
: household
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