[Vision2020] Health care {insurance} reform passed

[Andreas Schou]

> This law says that a single mom, in Idaho making $12 an hour 35 hours a
> week, makes about $22,000 a year is required to pay an insurance premium of
> $300 a month, for her and her son, a 20% co pay, with a $6000 deductable, or
> face a $750 fine.
>

> That is just crap! Unfair and I would like to see one person who supports
> this federal mandate to purchase health insurance on how this is not going
> to be a major burden on her and her child?
>

This is incorrect. The person you just described is well within the expanded
Medicaid coverage within the bill, presuming that there is no major change
in the poverty line between now and 2014. She will be exempt. However, as a
thought experiment, let's raise her total income to $30,000, so she falls
outside the Medicaid expansion.

The subsidy kicks in by fixing health care costs as a percentage of income
per person covered, on a sliding scale based on income. In other words, the
gov't pays out to subsidize the plan through the exchange when the cost
moves over the subsidy threshold. So, for a family of two making $30,000
p.y., the health insurance rates are capped by subsidy at 6.30% of gross
income per year.

She'll have to pay no more than $157 per month.


>
> 3) Constitutionality
>
> There is a significant question here as to if this bill is even
> constitutional.
>

Because the mandate is administered through taxation, he mandate is a
conditional exercise of the government's taxation power. It doesn't even
implicate their commerce power. I expect that if it reaches the Supreme
Court, there will be no more than three votes to overturn it.

-- ACS
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