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Sparkle (0)
Ok. here is how the senate bill is reading as far as I can tell:
According to page 324, section 1501 of Senate Health Care bill, starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance will be penalized with the below:
Year 2014:
Single: $94
Single + 1 $190
Single+2: $285
Year 2015:
Single: $350
Single + 1 $799
Single+2: $1050
Year 2016:
Single: $750
Single + 1 $1500
Single+2: $2250
Refusal to pay the fines starts first with the yanking your refund to pay the fee, and cotinued refusal results in jail time.
The first problem is that we do not know how much premiums are going to cost. I have been trying to look for an average figure, but there really is none. From what I have been seeing, an individual should expect to pay between $4,000 and $12,000 depending solely on state differences.
How many of those of us who bear the burden of student debt will be able to take on this additional necessity?
We cannot tel how much this is going to cost us in 2014, when the fines start piling up, but here is what we know now:
1. we are not insured because we cannot afford it, not because we believe we are "healthy". Affordable plans right now cover nothing helpful. In the choice between risking health for free and risking health and finances paying into a cheap plan, Most would rather not risk finances. For example, a friend of mine at one time had a plan through her job that, though affordable per month, came with an $800 deductable. What is the point of paying into a system if you can't pay the deductable? What will the average deductibles and premiums be in 2014?
2. No amount of compensation can help those of us whose income margins are so tight that $20 worth of monthly fees can mean that the table will be bare for a portion of that month. Surprisingly, not everyone with this problem is below the poverty line. Well, not so surprising to those of us who know the crushing burden of student loan debt. i can feed the two of us for about 5 days on $20 if I stretch, can prepare everything with the basics for nutrition, though some of those days will be bean and rice soup kind of days. Still this shouldn't have to be a consideration.
3. Can the government guarantee that the cost of living will remain steady? If things are anything like the last eight, the answer is no. The prices will continue to rise. Also based on the last twenty years, we will not see any wage hikes either. So, cost of living will go up, wages will remain flat, and suddenly we are being forced to pay aother fee to tighten our already tightly controlled budgets. In junction with #2, there is every possibility that this will starve people, or force them out of their homes, but hey, at least they will have health care for as long as they can keep their jobs while starving to death without a permanant address.
5. So, they are going to take the fees out of our returns. . .ok, well, first, what happens when you actually owe money? It happens, especially right around the lines of the tax brackets. If you can't pay, you go to jail. They say that the poverty lines will change because of this bill, but because they can't tell how much the average person pays, they can't tell us how much we are going to be subsidized other than to establish a percentage.
6. how can they really pass this without also taking away the states' rights to regulate insurance? There are fifty states out there and a few territories, and every one of them has a different notion of what is fair and allowable as far as insurance goes. There is just not a serious national standard. Maybe this is going to be part of "phase 2" for healthcare, but a lot of states are already honking about measures to block federal legislation. It seems to me that if they suddenly care so much,
