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| Home Front: Politix |
| Obama's Health Tax -- on the Middle Class |
| 2009-09-22 |
| The elderly were the first group to turn against Obama's health care proposals, alienated by the huge $500 billion cut in Medicare in his plan. Now the young and the uninsured may be the next demographic group to jump ship, concerned about the huge premiums they will be required to pay for health insurance. The requirement that everybody buy health insurance will impose a massive tax on all who now are uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the middle income uninsured will have to pay an average of more than 15 percent of their income in premiums, deductibles and co-payments under the plan. For the poor, there will still be Medicaid. But for those individuals earning more, the required premium payments will be worse than any tax increase. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that when the program is fully implemented — by 2016 — an individual earning $32,400 a year would have to pay $4,100 of his income in premiums before getting any subsidy. The CBO projects that, with deductibles and co-payments, he'd have to shell out $5,600 annually or 17.3 percent of his income. A family of four making $80,000 a year would have to pay about $10,500 in premiums alone. With deductibles and co-payments, it could rise to $15,000, or just under 20 percent. ... |
| Posted by:ed |