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<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt">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.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt">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?</span></div>
</td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>She'll have to pay no more than $157 per month. </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
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<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt">3) Constitutionality</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt">There is a significant question here as to if this bill is even constitutional.</span></div></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>-- ACS</div></div>