CBO raises estimate of those hit by Obama health care tax
By Paige Winfield Cunningham The Washington Times
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 Congressional Budget Office Six million Americans will pay the health care tax rather than obtain coverage under President Obama’s health care law, according to a new Congressional Budget Office estimate Wednesday — a 50 percent increase over CBO’s estimate of just two years ago.
CBO also said there will be 30 million people without insurance, though all but the 6 million will be exempt from the tax. The exempt residents are a combination of illegal immigrants and those with incomes too low to pay income taxes.
The agency said the government will collect about $7 billion from the tax in 2016, and $8 billion a year thereafter.
The projections apply to 2016, the point at which most of President Obama’s health care law will be implemented and the penalty for failing to buy coverage will have risen to its full amount of $695 per person or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greater.
The agency gave several reasons for revising its projections. For one thing, Congress has passed legislation requiring Americans to pay back more health insurance subsidies if they’re overpaid, making buying coverage less attractive.
The economy is also improving more slowly than expected, leading to lower wages and salaries that could make it harder to buy coverage.
And some low-income Americans may have less access to expanded Medicaid programs than originally expected. Several states are expected to opt out of expanding Medicaid, after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the government can’t respond by stripping away all their funding for the program.
The six million expected to pay the penalty is a relatively small percentage of the 30 million non-elderly residents who will be uninsured in 2016.
How's that hopey changey thing working for everyone?
"How's that hopey changey thing working for everyone?" Fantastic as far as I'm concerned!!!
~ Because of the Affordable Care Act, young adults under the age of 26 are able to stay on their parents’ health care plans, a provision that’s already helped 6 million young Americans.
~ Insurance companies are required to provide free preventive care like checkups and mammograms, a provision that’s already helped 54 million Americans with private insurance.
~ In 2010, Obamacare made it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to children under the age of 19 based on a pre-existing condition. In 2014, insurance companies cannot refuse to sell coverage or renew policies to anyone based on a pre-existing condition, a provision that's already helped millions of Americans.
~ ObamaCare requires insurers to give out annual rebates by Aug. 1, starting this year, if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collect go toward medical care. For insurers covering large employers, the threshold is 85 percent. As a result, insurers will pay out $1.1 billion this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The average rebate will be $151 per household, with the highest in Vermont ($807 per family), Alaska ($622) and Alabama ($518). No rebates will be issued in New Mexico or Rhode Island, because insurers there met the 80/20 requirement.
Congratulations President Barack Hussein Obama... Keep up the good work and a BIG THANKS for Obamacare!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
~ ObamaCare requires insurers to give out annual rebates by Aug. 1, starting this year, if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collect go toward medical care. For insurers covering large employers, the threshold is 85 percent. As a result, insurers will pay out $1.1 billion this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The average rebate will be $151 per household, with the highest in Vermont ($807 per family), Alaska ($622) and Alabama ($518). No rebates will be issued in New Mexico or Rhode Island, because insurers there met the 80/20 requirement.
they took the food supply: controlled it they took the water supply: controlled it they took the educations system: controlled it they took health care system: controlled it' they took transportation system: controlled it
what does that make the 99% of us?
HAMSTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
they took the food supply: controlled it they took the water supply: controlled it they took the educations system: controlled it they took health care system: controlled it' they took transportation system: controlled it
They took the radio waves and demanded licensing to use it to make money off the rest of us. They took the airspace and demanded a license to borrow it. They took natural, fishing and hunting of food, and demanded a license to feed yourself. They took all of the lands of the nation and declared them government lands, requiring payment to borrow them.
They took the Constitution and have it held prisoner indefinitely without due process, as allowed under the NDAA.
Medicare Bills Rise as Records Turn Electronic By REED ABELSON, JULIE CRESWELL and GRIFFIN J. PALMER Published: September 21, 2012 When the federal government began providing billions of dollars in incentives to push hospitals and physicians to use electronic medical and billing records, the goal was not only to improve efficiency and patient safety, but also to reduce health care costs But, in reality, the move to electronic health records may be contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care.
Hospitals received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements in 2010 than they did five years earlier, at least in part by changing the billing codes they assign to patients in emergency rooms, according to a New York Times analysis of Medicare data from the American Hospital Directory. Regulators say physicians have changed the way they bill for office visits similarly, increasing their payments by billions of dollars as well.
The most aggressive billing — by just 1,700 of the more than 440,000 doctors in the country — cost Medicare as much as $100 million in 2010 alone, federal regulators said in a recent report, noting that the largest share of those doctors specialized in family practice, internal medicine and emergency care.
For instance, the portion of patients that the emergency department at Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica, N.Y., claimed required the highest levels of treatment — and thus higher reimbursements — rose 43 percent in 2009. That was the same year the hospital began using electronic health records.
The share of highest-paying claims at Baptist Hospital in Nashville climbed 82 percent in 2010, the year after it began using a software system for its emergency room records.
In e-mailed statements, representatives for both hospitals said the increases reflected more accurate billing for services. Faxton also said its patients required more care than in past years.
Over all, hospitals that received government incentives to adopt electronic records showed a 47 percent rise in Medicare payments at higher levels from 2006 to 2010, the latest year for which data are available, compared with a 32 percent rise in hospitals that have not received any government incentives, according to the analysis by The Times.
The higher coding has captured the attention of federal and state regulators and private insurers like Aetna and Cigna. This spring, the Office of Inspector General for the federal Health and Human Services Department warned that the coding of evaluation services had been “vulnerable to fraud and abuse.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09.....nic-records.html?_r=
And again........the poor will get poorer and the health care will be a skeleton of what we know today!! Folks can't afford it!! And obviously the government didn't do their homework or out and out lied to the american people!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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