While you fret about your finances, upcoming taxes and Obamacare penalties, Jonathan Gruber is laughing all the way to the bank.
Covered California has a message for you peons: sign up for health care coverage or pay the price. They urged consumers Wednesday to sign up for Obamacare coverage by the Jan. 31 deadline or face stiff tax penalties. Last November, I did a blog post on how the IRS has set much higher penalties for not having health care insurance. Read it and weep.
The Sacramento Bee reports how this year the IRS penalties are hitting harder. The penalties will range from a minimum of $700 for an individual to as much as $10,000 for a family of four, depending on income. The average penalty in 2016 will be $969. That’s a 47 percent increase from last year, according to a recent analysis by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
Peter Lee, Director of Covered California
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state’s health care exchange for Obamacare policies, spins the mandate as good news. He said, “The bigger penalty is showing up at an emergency room and walking out with a bill in tens of thousands of dollars*.” Or, he added, not getting regular checkups because of no insurance and then developing a late-stage cancer that went undetected. “Californians have a choice in signing up or rolling the dice and taking a big gamble.”
*Under my new individual plan, I would still have to spend $6,000 for an emergency room visit (if many services were warranted). That’s my deductible for the cheapest plan I could afford, which costs me $308 per month.
As you know, under Obamacare tax penalties are considered a “shared responsibility” payment by those who can afford to buy health care coverage but choose not to do so. The penalties are either 2.5 percent of household income (up to a cap) or $695 a person and $347.50 per child, whichever is higher.
As of last week, Lee said more than 230,000 (less than 1% of their population) Californians have signed up for Covered California policies during the three-month enrollment season, which started last November.
DCG