Anyone effected by Obama Car yet?

At the end of every month we have no money left over. We keep expenses to the minimum.
Live in the N East and I keep the heat on 60 during the day, 64 for 3 hours in the evening when wife gets home, 55 through the night. Hope heat can be kept off till Nov.

Can not qualify for the low cost state HI that was in place before Obama Care.

If you can not afford health insurance how can the government penalize you and charge you a penalty?

There are government subsidies to help pay for healthcare if you can't get it through your employer and meet income guidelines. The vast majority of people who will be buying health insurance through the new insurance exchanges will qualify for a subsidy. Based on your financial situation, it's very likely you will qualify for a subsidy and pay very little for your health insurance.

I do not qualify for the government sub. We make just above the guidelines. We pay mortgage, prop taxes, elect, heat, water, internet, direct tv without premium channels, cell phones, car ins. Pay our monthly bills then we are broke. In the course of 30 days we have just enough to pay our bills again. Then broke again.

So there is no money for HI and no money for any IRS penalties for not having HI.

An individual earning up to $45,000 a year qualifies for a subsidy. The cut-off would be higher for a family of two (not sure how high, but a family of 4 can still qualify if they earn up to $92,000 a year). Those are pretty high numbers, 400% above the Federal poverty line in fact. I really don't see how someone earning that much money has nothing left over after paying the bills each month.

HCOL area?

Possible, but I live in So-Cal, about as high as COL gets, and we only earn $50K for a family of 3 (though right now, we're a family of 6 since we're pretty much supporting my mother and two of our adult sons) and we still manage. We get insurance through my husband's work, but we still have to pay about $250 for our monthly premium. If you factor in the subsidies, many people who buy insurance through the Obamacare exchanges will pay less than we do. As far as I could tell, a couple earning somewhere around $55K a year will still qualify for some subsidies.

400% of poverty level for a couple is 62000/year. Estimated cost for a silver plan (national average) is 491/month, and no subsidy.

Tools;

http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/healthpolicy/calculator/index.shtml

We may or may not be effected, depending on how NGB's insurance is categorized. It is nowhere near what it was when I worked grocery as well.

We don't qualify for subsidies at this time, because both employers offer coverage - 3/4 of my employers offer coverage. My main employer coverage would cost 1500/month for family coverage.

As a family of 5, we clock in (based on last year's income, which we won't meet this year as I reduced my crazy schedule) at 265% of federal poverty level in a deeply affordable COL area.

I do not know what the cut offs for Obama Care are. Though prior OC my states cut offs were way lower. People here earning $92,000 will have a job that gives them HI so they will not need Obama Care.

Where I live the average household income is $100,000. We make shy less then half. It is a high cost of living area in the north east. Not everyone is rich. Though $100,000 income will only get you a $250,000 mortgage here. We are going to be above the $45k mark though no where close to $92k.

It has been said that the low cost OC HI is going to provide low benefit payments and a lot that is not covered. I am going to be 60. As one gets older a HI plan that does not cover everything is going to be like having no insurance.

Like just having liability car insurance so you can get plates and drive but no theft, fire, collision.

The COL in So Cal does not even COMPARE to the COL in the northeast - the northeast has the highest COL in the country, especially some parts of it. It would take about 120,000 dollars a year to begin to be the same in the northeast as 50,000 would be most other places.

So yes, I can completely understand why you have no money left, Road.

Once again....the very rich are fine, the very poor are fine, those who do not work or are not here legally are fine....

The rest of us are screwed.

And people who live below the federal poverty line do not have a mortgage, etc because they live in subsidized housing, get food stamps, and qualify for medicaid. Hence they don;t have to spend their earning (if they have any) for the same types of bills.

I followed those links.

One said I would have to pay $3700 a year. The other one said $317 a month. We are going to get rid of the land line. Though that is going to only free up $75 a month. There is no more fat to trim. I usually do my own maintenance and repairs. Though things I can not as the cesspool trouble I have to call in the CP man. $600.

If I had the money prior to Obama Care I would of bought my own HI. I just do not see me affording even Obama Care. Have to wait and see how things unfold.

If you check it out, you will find that of the areas with the highest COL in the U.S, three are in CA, and one of them is Orange County, where my husband works. 50K a year here buys nothing. The average income for all of OC is $75K, but for many areas, it is much higher. The average income for the city in South-OC where we used to live was $92K. Housing costs in OC average about $450K, but many homes are far above the half-million mark - just average family homes, not mansions.

We can't even afford to live in the county where my husband works anymore. We have to live in the Inland Empire (an armpit with horrible crime, bad education, and some of the worst air pollution in the country) and he has to endure a terrible commute.

So, I do understand. We struggle. We've never had money left over at the end of the month. But that would be much worse if we didn't have insurance and one of us got sick. My mother was hospitalized for 4 days last summer when she had a minor stroke. She had no insurance. The bill she received in the mail was for $44,000. She was living off $700 a month in disability at the time. Of course, she couldn't pay it. So the hospital wrote off the entire amount. Good for my mom, but not so good for those of us who have insurance and have to pay for these write-offs in the form of higher premiums and higher prices when we go to the doctor. That is what Obamacare is attempting to fix. I hope it works.

I ran the numbers on the Obamacare calculator though, and a family our size earning what we earn would qualify for enough subsidies to make the monthly premium similar to the premium we already pay through my husband's work.

**edit**

Think I'm going to pay the penalty in 2014 and watch the trainwreck.

I'll be curious to see how many people pay the penalty tax because they can afford to do that with their refund but cannot afford the monthly cost of insurance. I'm covered and my kids are covered. My wife is not. To cover her on my insurance offered by the school district would run $647 a month.

I think the first year, a lot of people will choose this option. But it gets progressively more expensive to do this in subsequent years, so I think more people will choose to buy at least a bare-bones insurance plan at that point.

The thing I heard The Road saying is that he cannot afford to pay premiums NOW. So the whole "with subsidies it won't be more than a regular premium" is moot. If he can't pay a premium NOW....he can't pay a premium then either.

That is why I am praying like crazy that my husband gets this job and why I am also looking for "regular" work. Because if we can't get benefits through our employer we sure as heck can't afford to buy Obamacare just because the government says "we have to or else."

This boils down to just another in a long line of typical unfunded mandates. But hey, what do I know?

Last years tax return was about $2,000. It all went towards paying the spring property tax bill.

To of lost that money would of moved the town to start eviction proceedings for non payment of taxes and ruin my credit rating.

This year I hope to not need that money for taxes though I have no idea what my return will be. Though last year was the last year that I was able to declare my last child.

I would use my tax refund to pay for insurance rather then to lose it as a penalty. Though I think at best I will break even in 2014.

And if we have to have insurance in place by Jan 1, 2014. Even if I was to get a several thousand dollar refund. I will get penalized and lose most of the refund because I won't have the refund check before Jan 1, 2014 to buy the insurance so I don't get penalized.

The first year, the penalty is only about $90 per person, so basically nothing. It's the second year when the penalties start to become more expensive.

But getting insurance through an employer isn't any cheaper than getting it through the exchanges. It's still money we have to pay each month that we really could use for something else.

But not having insurance is irresponsible. Most people, if they get sick, expect to be taken care of whether they have insurance or can pay for the care or not. And the law requires hospitals to care for people even if they aren't insured and can't pay for it. This causes the costs of medical care and insurance to go up, and ultimately, it is people who carry insurance who end up paying for these costs through increased premiums and increased medical costs. I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair. I don't think my insurance premiums should go up every year (which they do) just so I can cover the costs of medical treatment for people who choose not to carry insurance and can't afford to pay for their own care when they get sick.

Sometimes we can't help it. You have to go to college to get a job to get insurance, but what if you don't have parents that can provide insurance while you are in college?

Sure you can get a fulltime job in college, but what sort of insurance will you get from a typical college-age entry-level job that won't push you farther over the edge?

I had a job that provided medical, dental, and vision benefits for me and my family at 19.

However, that same job (grocery) today is radically different. Especially in the front end, where I worked.

NGB still works grocery, but she has been in a department - just recently promoted to produce manager. So, full family coverage for $18/week employee contribution.

Whereas my job (long-term care and rehabilitation) it would cost $1500/month for medical-only family coverage.


All being said - the cost of coverage isn't the seat of the issue, it's the cost of care.

But, the philosophy here is increasing coverage will help to drive down the cost of care, because inability to pay, or unpaid care costs are a large driver of increasing care costs. This largely reflects hospital costs, though. Clinics and private practices can turn away patients while hospitals generally can not.

Also, having a larger pool of payers into coverage should theoretically drive down coverage costs. Either that, or create record profits for providers....

I'm banking on record profits...

For my son, who is 22 and an hourly employee at a retail store, his hours were drastically reduced so that the employer didn't have to offer him health insurance. He can hardly pay his bills and I don't see him moving out of my parent's basement any time soon.

The good thing is, if you are able, he can now be covered on your insurance until he is 26. We have all of our adult kids on our insurance and it doesn't cost us anything extra. There are three tiers to our insurance: individual, couple, or family. Since we have a 5-year-old, we have to get the "family" coverage, but the premium doesn't increase no matter how many people are in the family. So we pay the same to cover seven people as we would to cover three.

Yes, he is covered by my insurance and his employer knows that, but they still cut hos hours. He has been looking for full time work all summer.

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