You Have To Pass The Bill To Find Out What's In It. . . - The Omega Letter

You Have To Pass The Bill To Find Out What's In It. . . - The Omega Letter
You Have To Pass The Bill To Find Out What's In It. . . 
Commentary on the News 
Wednesday, February 13, 2013 
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor 

The Internal Revenue Service has issued its calculations for how Obamacare will affect the poorest Americans, exposing the system for the total fraud that it is.  Assuming, of course, that the ACTUAL intent was to make health care available to all Americans.

A little-known section (that nobody read until after they passed it) of the Obamacare law defines "full time" work as thirty-hours per week.

“The term ‘full-time employee’ means, with respect to any month, an employee who is employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week,” section 1513 of the law reads.  (Scroll down to section 4, paragraph A.)

That section, known as the employer mandate, requires any business with 50 or more full-time employees to provide at least the minimum level of government-defined health coverage to those employees.
In other words, a business must provide insurance if it has 50 or more employees working an average of just 30 hours per week, which is 10 hours per week fewer than the traditional 40-hour work week.
If an employer has 50 or more "full-time employees" and does not offer health insurance, it must pay a penalty per employee for each month it does not offer coverage.
Under these standards, published in September, employers can choose a “look-back” period of between 3 and 12 months to measure if an employee has worked an average of 30 hours per week.
If an employee has worked 30 hours per week during this time, the person would count as a full-time employee for at least the next six months, regardless of how much they work, thus preventing employers from cutting hours to avoid the mandate.
In other words, an employer calculates the hours an employee works during at least a three-month period, determining if they employee has worked 30 hours or more per week on average.
If the employee meets the 30-hour threshold, they are counted as full-time for at least six months. If the employer has at least 50 such employees, he must provide them with health insurance or pay a fine.

And sooo, employers will of course put themselves under IRS jurisdiction and put the best interests of their companies behind what is best for the Obamacare plan.

Certainly, they wouldn't consider cutting back employee hours until they fall below the thirty-hour-per-week threshold to avoid paying a per-employee fine.  To the IRS.  

Would they?

"I'm from the IRS.  I'm here to help you. . .  I'm from the IRS.  I'm here to help you. . . I'm from the IRS.  I'm here to help you. . ."

You just say it three times and click your heels together and soon, we'll all be back in Kansas. . .

But back in the Obamanation, many small employers have already begun reducing employee hours to just under thirty hours, making part-time the new full-time.

If you can find a job at all.

How will Obamacare help low-income families obtain health care?  The IRS just issued final regulations to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

According to the IRS calculations, under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

According to proposed legislation, the federal minimum wage will be somewhere around $9.80 per hour in 2016, the first year that the IRS will begin assessing penalties for non-compliance.    

Let's assume that a person can actually find a forty-hour per week job paying minimum wage.  That would earn a before-deductions gross pay of $392 per week.

Let's assume both parents are working (broad assumption) and that they have three kids in school.   Between them they earn the princely sum of $784.00 per week.  Before deductions for Social Security, state and local taxes, and whatever federal taxes the IRS can sneak in.

Let's be generous and assume they get to keep $700 of it. 

Before moving on, let's tally up all these assumptions.  The IRS says the cheapest health care available to this family (the "Bronze Plan") will cost $20,000 per year.  That's what it will cost for minimum health care coverage no matter how much money a family earns, or they will have to pay a fine, (fee, tax, or whatever).

Under the law, the penalty for not buying at least the minimum standard health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, ($20,000 -- or 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family effective in 2016.)

Our assumed American family (the one that Obamacare is supposed to be aimed at helping) making minimum wage has two parents both working an (unlikely) forty hour week and making a combined take-home of roughly $700 per week. 

That is an annual income (if they both find forty-hour per week jobs in a thirty-hour per week economy) of $36,400, out of which they must somehow pay $20,000 for minimum health care coverage, leaving them with $16,400 per year for food, rent, groceries, etc. 

Forget about a car. (They can't even afford gas, let alone insurance.)  BUT -- if they pay an annual $2400.00 fee, (fine, penalty, tax, whatever) to the IRS, they will be allowed to live WITHOUT the healthcare insurance that they can't afford to pay for anyway.

Before Obamacare, they couldn't afford health care coverage (even though it was cheaper when it wasn't mandated) but now, they have to pay a fine (fee, tax, whatever) to the IRS for which they still don't have any health insurance coverage.

One thing I found interesting in the IRS' calculations is that in all of its examples, it assumes a family of five earning a combined income of $120,000 per year. 

I have six grown children with young families.  Not one of them has a combined family income of $120,000 per year.  Maybe my kids are just slackers.  (Email me if any of your kids starting out with a young family make $120k per year.)

We had to pass the bill in order to find out what was in it.  Then, if you don't like it, complain.  (To the IRS). That's how Obamacare works in the New America.  

It's all about helping out the poor. . .

"And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." (Revelation 6:5-6)