Obamacare Will Force Families to Buy Insurance Costing at Least $12,000/Year

CBO: Obamacare Will Force Families to Buy Insurance Costing at Least $12,000/Year
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Posted by: Meredith Jessup at 10:47 PM

More good news tonight from CNSNews.com:

If Congress passes the Senate health-care plan, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, American families will be required by federal law to buy a federally approved health insurance plan that will cost a minimum of $12,000 per year--and, on average, will cost $15,000 per year -- whether their employer or the government helps them with the premium or not. ...

Families earning more than $88,200 a year (or whatever 400 percent of the poverty level equals in any given year) would be entirely on their own. Under the Senate bill, employers would not be required to purchase health insurance for their workers, and if they decided not to do so, the maximum penalty they would have to pay would be $750 per year for each worker they did not insure who subsequently received a federal subsidy to buy insurance. The $750 penalty on employers who decided not to insure their workers would be far less than they would pay in premiums for the $12,000 minimum required plan.

According to the CBO analysis, the insurance plans the Senate bill would require families to purchase would cost an average of $15,200 per year in 2016. “Average premiums among all types of plans in 2016 would be about $5,800 for single policies and about $15,200 for family policies,” CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf wrote in a letter to Sen. Olympa Snowe (R-Maine).

But even the bare-bones, minimum coverage required by the individual mandate in the bill--known as the “Bronze” level insurance plans--would cost families an estimated $12,000 to $12,500 a year, Elmendorf told Snowe.

What a nightmare.

Here's more...

Thursday, March 18, 2010
16,500 More IRS Agents Needed to Enforce Obamacare
Posted by: Meredith Jessup at 5:27 PM
This, according to Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.

In a press release out today, Rep. Brady reports that a new analysis by Republican staffers on the Joint Economic and the House Ways & Means Committees estimates the IRS will have to hire an additional 16,500 workers to "collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses in the 'reconciliation' bill." In addition, he adds:

Scores of new federal mandates and fifteen different tax increases totaling $400 billion are imposed under the Democratic House bill. In addition to more complicated tax returns, families and small businesses will be forced to reveal further tax information to the IRS, provide proof of ‘government approved’ health care and submit detailed sales information to comply with new excise taxes.

Isn't it comforting to know that despite the fact we'll likely have a massive shortage of doctors in America once this thing passes, we'll have an abundance of tax-collecting IRS agents?