Election has consequences.
Do you remember, mere days before the House’s dramatic late-night passage of Obamacare, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) saying that “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”?
Surprise!
Here’s another new Obamacare cost increase!
32 months after Congress passed Obamacare, regulation after regulation is coming out of the Obama regime’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The latest is a requirement that every private health plan in America be subject to a $63 fee, which will go toward a fund to subsidize people with pre-existing conditions. The $63-per-head fee is expected to affect 190 million health care plans held by individuals or provided by employers.
Now we find out that when Obama said his Obamacare will not deny coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions, no matter how dire, he meant all of us with health insurance will pay for the added costs. It’s called “Spreading the Wealth,” which is otherwise called Socialism. And we all know how well socialism turned out to be. [snark]
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports for the Associated Press, Dec. 10, 2012, that the new $63-per-head fee is buried in a recent HHS regulation, which employers likely will pass on to workers.
Chantel Sheaks, an employee benefits lawyer and a principal at Xerox subsidiary Buck Consultants, calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers: “Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, [companies will] be hit with a multimillion-dollar assessment without getting anything back for it.”
Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.
The program “is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all,” the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to “contributions” without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.
Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.
The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama’s expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.
But the $63 insurance fee ($5.25 per month) had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don’t provide coverage. “This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount,” said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.
But employers already offering coverage to their workers don’t see why they have to pay into the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.
Read the rest of the AP article here.
The Obama regime says the new $63 fee is just a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. The Obama regime also says the new fee starts at $63 and then declines.
If you believe that, then you must also believe in the Easter bunny.
For a list of Obamacare taxes coming your way, click here.
~Eowyn
