USA Today:
A “family glitch” in the 2010 health care law threatens to cost some families thousands of dollars in health insurance costs and leave up to 500,000 children without coverage, insurance and health care analysts say.
That’s unless Congress fixes the problem, which seems unlikely given the House’s latest move Friday to strip funding from the Affordable Care Act.
Congress defined “affordable” as 9.5% or less of an employee’s household income, mostly to make sure people did not leave their workplace plans for subsidized coverage through the exchanges. But the “error” was that it only applies to the employee — and not his or her family. So, if an employer offers a woman affordable insurance, but doesn’t provide it for her family, they cannot get subsidized help through the state health exchanges.
That can make a huge difference; the Kaiser Family Foundation said an average plan for an individual is about $5,600, but it goes up to $15,700 for families. Most employers help out with those costs, but not all.
“We saw this two-and-a-half years ago and thought, ‘Has anyone else noticed this?'” said Kosali Simon, a professor of public affairs at Indiana University who specializes in health economics. “Everyone said, ‘No, no. You must be wrong.’ But we weren’t, and that’s going to leave a lot of people out.”
The issue has recently received attention, especially after former president Bill Clinton highlighted it in a recent speech.
“The family glitch is definitely a drafting error that Congress made that needs to be fixed,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. “But that seems unlikely.”
New rules state that those families will not be penalized for not purchasing coverage, but the point of the law was to make coverage affordable for families.
Other challenges for families remain as the Obama administration and the health care industry gear up for the Oct. 1 opening of the exchanges, websites for each state on which customers can shop for and buy health insurance. The law requires uninsured Americans to buy health insurance; many are eligible for government subsidies to help them for the policies. For example:
• Kids may not receive Medicaid or exchange coverage if their parents aren’t eligible and, therefore, don’t know to check.
• Undocumented immigrants may not learn their children are eligible for insurance.
The law has already helped children, Alker said, because it “stabilizes Medicaid and CHIP,” the insurance program for children.
However, 70% of uninsured kids are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, but they’re not all enrolled, she said.
Well, “we must pass the bill so we know what is in it!” When a population like the liberals believe in an ideology and disdain personal values, we get a law so full of unintended consequences that it must fail. The multitude of actions by liberals concerning alternative energy and combating a global warning that isn’t are other examles where “feel good” ideology of liberals fail.
It isn’t just this family that will be hurt by obamacare. In spite of the repeated lies from Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Sebelius and the rest of the obamacare zealots, all the horrible cost increases and negative effects on the medical system are coming to pass:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/25/double-down-obamacare-will-increase-avg-individual-market-insurance-premiums-by-99-for-men-62-for-women/?partner=yahootix
Even the NYT is begrudgingly admitting obamacare is going to cause rationing of medical care:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/health/lower-health-insurance-premiums-to-come-at-cost-of-fewer-choices.html?_r=0
Anyone who continues to support obamacare – a law that was passed at the last minute of the democrat controlled congress in 2010 without a single republican vote, without any member of Congress actually reading the damned bill before voting on it, and from which Congress has given itself a de facto exemption from while forcing the rest of the country to pay for it – is either a government apparatachik who will unfairly benefit from the negative effects of this horrific law, or is so bereft of common sense that they cannot understand that overindulgent soft-hearted, magical-thinking ALWAYS produces the exact opposite effect from what was originally desired….and creates worse problems than previously existed.
People are learning they are not likely going to be able to keep their doctor or their insurance plan as Obama lied in pushing this socialist nightmare.
People are having their hours cut, and employers are tossing full-time employees onto the obamacare exchanges in order to cut operating expenses because continuing to provide the benefits they were already providing to employees is no longer possible under the obamacare mandates. Investor’s Business Daily has catalogued over 300 companies that have announced this step, including hospitals and universites – not just business entities.
How can any obamacare supporter not see that the Congressional de facto exemption – by which taxpayers are now paying for the increased cost of obamacare premiums for people making over $150,000/yr working in Congress in order to avoid “brain drain” from congressional staff positions – is not a slap in the face admission that obamacare will ultimately be a negative effect on business costs and on individuals? Why are congressional staffers and congressmen more important than workers in private business?
How can anyone who thinks obamacare will cost less than current insurance not admit the fact that obamacare calls for taxpayers to subsidize illegal aliens and those who cannot afford the new unaffordable obamacare premiums? This means that obamacare HAS to be more expensive, despite all of Obama’s lies that premiums would go down an average of $2500/yr, and that illegal aliens would not be covered.
How can leftists look at themselves in the mirror KNOWING that all the alleged benefits of obamacare have been proven time after time to be bald-faced lies, and that all of the negative effects those of us opposed to obamacare stated would happen, are in effect happening?
The obamacare imposition has NOTHING to do with providing medical care to everyone. It is a leftist scam to further expand the welfare state, making citizens into serfs for the new leftist aristocracy.
who will make a profit from it?
not THE PEOPLE, not the hospitals, not the unionise staf in hospitals, not the sick PEOPLE,
not the DOCTORS nor the SPECIALIST,
who might it be ? OBAMA and gang on all the steps of his ladder,
they are the ones who will get the bulk of that money ,
and will help themselves like royalty before any other,
just look at VETS BEING DELAYED A MINIMUM 5 YEARS, before they receive what is due to them,
a backlog and for what? this is another scam, and OBAMA know it IS there is no doubt that this is a
deflection of their money for who? to benefit, and they will do the same thing, by not paying quicly the provider of help as doctors and specialists by demanding all kinds of info and tons of papers asking questions after questions, the 3rd degree yes,a real torment,they are good at, BECAUSE
all agencies work the same way on the PEOPLE,
see IRS TORMENTING THE CONSERVATIVES
AND TEA-PARTY
while they use that money for themselves
UP ABOVE THE HILL, LOOKING DOWN AT THEIR FIX,
the DOCTORS and SPECIALISTS, will leave out of frustration, being replace by low cost foreigners just out of UNIVERSITY, who will be happy to oblige , and cut the cost of care to patients,
same scam fitting that will diminish the care of the people sick and demanding the same services,
they too like the VETS , will be put on the waiting list,