🚀 go-pugleaf

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY, The New York Post

The central parts of ObamaCare don�t roll out until 2014, but 
the wheels are already falling off this clunker. The latest news 
from four federal agencies is that 1) insurance will be a lot 
less affordable than Americans were led to expect, 2) fewer 
people than promised will get insurance and 3) millions of 
people who have coverage through a job now will lose it, thanks 
to the president�s �reforms.� Oh, and children are the biggest 
victims.

The Affordable Care Act is looking less and less affordable.

Start with the IRS�s new estimate for what the cheapest family 
plan will cost by 2016: $20,000 a year to cover two adults and 
three kids. And that will only cover 60 percent of medical 
bills, so add hefty out-of-pocket costs, too.

The next surprise is for parents who thought their kids would be 
covered by an employer. Sloppy wording in the law left that 
unclear until last week, when the IRS ruled that kids won�t be 
covered.

Starting in 2014, the law will require employers with 50 or more 
full-time employees to offer coverage or pay a penalty. 
�Affordable� coverage, that is � meaning the employee can�t be 
told to contribute more than 9.5 percent of his salary. For 
example, a worker earning $40,000 a year cannot be required to 
pay more than $3.800.

But the law doesn�t specifically mandate family coverage � and 
now the administration says that won�t be required.

You can see why: If the lowest-cost family plan (again, two 
adults and three kids) is to run a whopping $20,000, and if the 
employee�s contribution is limited to $3,800, the employer�s tab 
would be $16,200 � adding about $7.40 an hour to the cost of 
that employee. Wisely, the IRS announced on Jan. 30 that 
employers won�t have to pay for dependents.

But the Congressional Budget Office�s much-cited prediction that 
ObamaCare would leave only 30 million people uninsured by 2016 
was based on the assumption that kids would be covered by 
employers. At the very least, employers insuring their workers 
for the first time to avoid the penalty are unlikely to do that.

So how will the kids be covered? They won�t. The IRS shocked the 
law�s advocates by announcing that the insurance exchanges won�t 
provide subsidies for a child whose parent is covered at work.

Nor will these parents be penalized for not insuring their 
children � the IRS will kindly consider the kids exempt from the 
mandate.

Also exempt are millions of people who�ll stay uninsured because 
their state is wisely choosing not to loosen Medicaid 
eligibility.

Some background: Despite President Obama�s promises to help 
solve the problem of the uninsured by making private health 
plans more affordable, the law expands coverage mainly by 
forcing states to loosen their Medicaid eligibility rules. But 
the Supreme Court ruled that the feds can�t command states in 
this way.

At first, the CBO said that ruling would only prevent 4 million 
people from gaining coverage � but more states than it expected 
are refusing to go along; it could well be 8 million more 
without coverage.

Oh, and the CBO last week also doubled its previous estimate on 
how many people will lose the health coverage they now get 
through work, upping the figure to 8 million by 2016 and 12 
million by 2019. Several top consulting firms put the figures 
even higher.

http://www.nypost.com/Page/Uuid/fa30e4fc-73fa-11e2-a4c8-
21450be48a0a

--
Are you obligated as an armed civilian, to defend unarmed 
liberals while you are both under fire by foreign agents of the 
outlaw Obama administration?

No.  Shoot the liberals immediately so they can't stab you in 
the back while you are defending yourself, then return a 
controlled rate of aimed fire.  ��

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