sad day for america. reminds me of when i was in grade school and saw the challenger blow up.
john roberts has embarassed himself in reaching for any possible slice of theory to accept the affordable care act.
I parsed through the opinion as well and didn’t quite follow Roberts’s line of reasoning either. He allowed the Court to issue an opinion by saying that the Anti-Injuction Act didn’t apply since it wasn’t proposed as a tax, but then went on to say the bill couldn’t be viewed as a penalty or assessed under the Commerce Clause, pulled a FTFY, and spun it into a tax. Shouldn’t this conclusion have invalidated the AIA prereq to issuing an opinion on ACA?
A couple of “gifts” the president gave the middle income folks through ACA:
$2,500 Cap on Health-Care FSA Contributions Right now, there’s no tax-law limit on contributions to your employer’s healthcare flexible spending account (FSA) plan (although many plan impose their own limits). Amounts you contribute to the FSA plan are subtracted from your taxable salary. Then you can use the funds to reimburse yourself tax-free to cover qualified medical expenses. Good deal! Starting in 2013, however, the maximum annual FSA contribution for each employee will be capped at only $2,500. Sorry Mr. & Mrs. Middle Income, if your medical bills exceed the new lower cap, you’re paying the excess with after-tax dollars.
Higher Threshold for Itemized Medical Expense Deductions Right now, you can claim an itemized deduction for medical expenses paid for you, your spouse, and your dependents, to the extent the expenses exceed 7.5% of AGI. Starting in 2013, the hurdle is raised to 10% of AGI.
Sorry Mr. & Mrs. Middle Income, those medical bills you now have to pay with after-tax dollars aren’t even going to deductible on your taxes.
Yeah, this is a huge victory for America, particularly middle-income Americans. I guess the good news is that pretty much everyone agrees that healthcare costs will increase as a result of ACA (at least in the short and intermediate term), so it will be easier to reach that 10% and start enjoying the tax break.
Govt getting bigger, another tax forced down our throats, insurance companies raising premiums for everyone which ultimately comes from our pockets through lowered paychecks.
Awesome.
My plan of action will actually save me money. 1. I will purchase catastrophic insurance of my own, just in case I’m in a car accident or something that leaves me unable to buy a normal policy. Catastrophic policies are very affordable because they don’t cover much else. 2. I will pay the $650 penalty every year until 2014 when that will rise with the rate of inflation. 3. When my health does go downhill, I will figure out if buying a policy is cheaper then paying out of pocket for whatever is actually wrong. 4. When I do get cancer or whatever, I’ll buy a normal policy since insurance industries can’t refuse my pre existing condition. This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.
Sep 20, 2009 Obama "Mandate is Not a Tax"
ABC News Interview
STEPHANOPOULOS: …Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?
OBAMA: Well, hold on a second, George. Here – here’s what’s happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average – our families – in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I’ve said is that if you can’t afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn’t be punished for that. That’s just piling on. If, on the other hand, we’re giving tax credits, we’ve set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we’ve driven down the costs, we’ve done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you’ve just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that’s…
STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it’s still a tax increase.
OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The – for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy.
OBAMA: No, but – but, George, you – you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase.
OBAMA: What – what – if I – if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that’s not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don’t want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable…
STEPHANOPOULOS: I – I don’t think I’m making it up. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: Tax – “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”
OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean,…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but…
OBAMA: What you’re saying is…
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.
OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
June 29, 2012
Supreme Court Backs Obama on Health Law
Roberts concluded that the individual mandate m ust be construed as imposing a tax on those who do not have health insurance
The court declared the mandate to be a permissible exercise of Congress’s taxing powers under the Constitution. Payments required of individuals who do not maintain minimum health coverage are a tax and are allowed under Congress’s power to tax in Article 1 of the Constitution.
This means they are constitutional, even though a majority of the justices found that the individual mandate went beyond Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause. ------------------------------------ 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign ““I will cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”” Barack Obama “I can make a firm pledge – no family making less that $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase ,” he said in a September 2008 campaign speech in New Hampshire.
%#^@&\* politicians
[qyouuote=CFAvsMBA]
My plan of action will actually save me money. 1. I will purchase catastrophic insurance of my own, just in case I’m in a car accident or something that leaves me unable to buy a normal policy. Catastrophic policies are very affordable because they don’t cover much else. 2. I will pay the $650 penalty every year until 2014 when that will rise with the rate of inflation. 3. When my health does go downhill, I will figure out if buying a policy is cheaper then paying out of pocket for whatever is actually wrong. 4. When I do get cancer or whatever, I’ll buy a normal policy since insurance industries can’t refuse my pre existing condition. This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.
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Yep. That’s about all there is to it. Say one thing, do another, and when in doubt, just lie like crazy. I had a conversation with a friend about a year ago who seemed legitimately shocked that Obama didn’t follow through on his campaign promises. I just said to him, why would you ever expect any politician to do what they say they will do?
I think this is also a straw man presented by the pharma companies, they spend far more on marketing and sales then they do on R&D.
So what? The money they spend on marketing results in more money spent on R&D. Boner pills will probably fund the cure of cancer.
A very large portion of sales and marketing expense for pharma companies is educating physicians on the benefits and side effects of a new drug, as well as providing sample packs. Physicians can’t prescribe a drug that they don’t know exists and won’t prescribe a drug that they aren’t comfortable with the pros and cons. Sure they could read research papers to find out about new products, but why do that when they can have pharma sales reps wine and dine them instead? The advertisements on TV are pennies compared to the cost of the sales force.
the sales force works a great deal off commissions though, so it’s a highly variable cost
Quick, buy more boner pills… for science!
^ true, but still the driving factor in big pharma’s sales and marketing expenses.
This guy makes a very compelling argument that the biggest casualty of the US govt debt bubble bursting will be healthcare. The market pricing mechanism has been thrown out of whack for a very long time in this market (he says the 1970s, I’ve seen other research that says it began much earlier). Can’t continue forever can it? Eventually you run out of productive people to tax.