Fines for no health coverage proposed
Published: July 4, 2009
WASHINGTON - In a revamped health-care system envisioned by senators, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now.
The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face fines of more than $1,000.
The details were revealed Thursday in a health-care overhaul bill supported by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines would raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Families would pay higher penalties than individuals.
Called "shared responsibility payments," the fines would offset at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation. The goal is to nudge people to sign up for coverage when they are healthy instead of waiting until they are sick.
In 2008, employer-provided coverage averaged $12,680 a year for a family plan, and $4,704 for individual coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey.
With deepening divisions along partisan and ideological lines, the legislation faces an uncertain future.
Obama wants a bill this year that would provide coverage to the nearly 50 million Americans who lack it and reduce medical costs.
The Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions bill also calls for a government-run insurance option to compete with private plans as well as a $750-per-worker annual fee on larger companies that do not offer coverage to employees.
The Congressional Budget Office, in an analysis released Thursday evening, put the net cost of the proposal at $597 billion over 10 years. Coverage expansions worth $645 billion would be partly offset by savings of $48 billion, the estimate said.
However, the total cost of legislation will rise considerably once provisions are added to subsidize health insurance for the poor through Medicaid. Those additions, needed to ensure coverage for nearly all U.S. residents, are being handled by a separate panel, the Senate Finance Committee. Bipartisan talks on the Finance panel aim to hold the overall price to $1 trillion.
All the bills would require insurance companies to sell coverage to any applicant, without charging higher premiums for pre-existing medical conditions. The poor and some middle-class families would qualify for government subsidies to help with the cost of coverage. The government's costs would be covered by a combination of higher taxes and cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.
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Reader Reactions
Yeah, let’s just tell THAT to all the illegals and career ‘non-working welfare and WIC recipients’ and see how far we get collecting anything.
yes, yes, yes, let them eat cake.
One little detail about corporations that many don’t consider. Corporations are owned by their stockholders. Many are pension funds who want to make as much return on their investments as possible and if that means moving jobs overseas to increase the bottom line so be it. We are stockholders, we can control this but we don’t want to. We want to make as much money from our investments as possible. Just like those of us who sold inflated value homes to unsuspecting buyers who could never hope to pay for them. We need to quit blaming everybody but ourselves for this mess.
Jack,
You have a good understanding of why American jobs are going overseas. One thing you are omitting is that with the laissez-faire capitalism Republicans promote, there are no regulations or incentives that encourage American businesses to stay in America. Many other countries have relationships in place where companies still move overseas, but they don’t do so in a way that displaces workers en masse in their own countries. There is a different level of national pride and responsibility that is not apparent in America. The Gordon Gekko quote “Greed is Good” from the movie Wall Street typifies American business thought. The worker is just seen as a cost to be reduced or eliminated at the first opportunity.
CW-how quickly we forget. If you read Bush’s speech of 9/12 and the “Lets Roll” speech in November of the same year. Even Favreau couldn’t have been more inspiring. Were you hiding under a rock somewhere?
No. Just a short memory.
I addressed that small paragraph because that old “go shopping’ saw is so incredibly stupid. And it keeps popping up in the party line. Which was continued in fine parrot fashion in your following post.
A history lesson for democrats who want to “reform” our health care system. This is their record on social security.
Our Social Security
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Terms of Office March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945), a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program.. He Promised:
1.) That participation in the Program would be Completely voluntary,
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program,
3.) That the money the participants elected to put Into the Program would be deductible from Their income for tax purposes each year,
4.) That the money the participants put into the Independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would Only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month—and then finding that we are getting taxedon 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘Put Away’—you may be interested in the following:
————————————————————
1958 is the first year that Congress, not President Eisenhower, voted to remove funds from Social Security and put it into the General Fund for Congress to spend.
It was a democratically controlled Congress.
From what I understand, Congress logic at that time was that there was so much money in Social Security Fund that it would never run out / be used up for the purpose it was intended / set aside for.
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Question: Which Political Party took Social Security from the Independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the General Fund so that Congress could spend it?
Answer: It was Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat,Term of Office: November 22,1963 to January 20, 1969) and the democratically Controlled House and Senate.
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Question: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax Deduction for Social Security
(FICA) withholding?
Answer: The Democratic Party
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Question: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
Answer: The Democratic Party, with Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. (Al Gore) [Vice President Term of Office: January 10, 1993 to January 20, 2001] casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US
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Question: Which Political Party decided to start giving Annuitypayments to immigrants?
AND MY FAVORITE:
ANSWER: That’s right! JAMES EARL CARTER, JR. (JIMMY CARTER) (DEMOCRAT, TERM OF OFFICE: JANUARY 20, 1977 TO JANUARY 20, 1981 AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
IMMIGRANTS MOVED INTO THIS COUNTRY, AND AT AGE 65, BEGAN TO RECEIVE SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENTS: THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY GAVE THESE PAYMENTS TO THEM, EVEN THOUGH THEY NEVER PAID A DIME INTO IT!
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Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
jw you Bush hating Obama liberals seem to have very short selective memories. It was a democrat who pushed the free trade agreements like NAFTA shifting millions of American jobs to Mexico, India and China.
Democrats voice their support of American workers especially union workers to get their support and votes yet in practice encourage the same policies that shift jobs out of America.
Between the unions and citizens who purchased vehicles from foreign manufacturers the American auto industry didn’t stand a chance costing millions of jobs not only in the auto factories but the support industries. Citizens flock to Walmart, Target and other stores selling Chinese made products. Citizens bought Japanese electronics driving our electronic manufactures out of the country. Then whine and cry about losing their jobs. Now most of the jobs are at Walmart and Target. You can’t blame the companies for the transgressions of the customers demanding cheap goods. They must meet customer demands.
So to blame Bush is just the standard democrat liberal line. Point the finger at everyone and everything but themselves.
To even have someone like Obama president shows just how much we have declined from the ideals the country was founded on. I don’t think the founding fathers would ever have envisioned a socialist liberal who may not even be a legal citizen of the United States have the office of president. The only good thing about Obama we can be rid of him and his socialist allies in 2012. It might take many years if ever to erase the damage he has done and plans to do to our republic.
jack,
Saying that the info posted by dubiousthoughts are lifted from the “Obama socialist liberal playbook” and questioning his patriotism are too typical of politics theses day. We don’t agree with you so we should go somewhere else. It’s George Bush’s “my way or the highway” mentality. In truth, anyone who is a truly informed citizen has a duty to question the government at every step. Torture? Think Thomas Jefferson would of approved of that?
A few other items. No one has ever addressed the fact that tax cut’s send job’s overseas, and how we can get American’s back to work. We had 8 years of tax cut’s under bush, and corporations had downright handouts. Search on IBM and read about the past few years of them slowly laying off US workers and hiring mostly Indian employees. I have yet to hear a republican plan to bring job’s back to America that isn’t entirely based on tax cuts.
Returning to the topic of is the article. Obama isn’t trying to socialize healthcare. It even states so in the article you posted. “Obama has pointedly said he doesn’t want to bring European-Style health care to the US and he intends to introduce a government run plan to COMPETE with private insurance” I have no problem this. However, I generally don’t agree with the idea to force people to buy insurance. Lastly, if it happens this way I also don’t think it’s the “End of America” like so many on this thread. This is extremely over-dramatic.
Continuing with the free market proponents. Generally speaking, I’m all for this as well. However, there must be some regulation. Corporations have proven they cannot be trusted carte-blanche with our well being. There is not enough time for me to list how often a corporation makes a decision based on it’s bottom line that is morally bankrupt. How about the biggest example. It was government funded studies that “proved” smoking was bad for you. If you listened to the “Dr’s” paid for by big tobacco, well, you got cancer.
There has to be a line in the sand we can find as Democrats and Republican’s. A compromise with regulation and free market, to protect the citizens of the US and get innovation jump-started HERE and not in India and China. And, we cannot sustain our current health care costs. It will cripple us.
Jack,
What made this country great has been eroded. When the US was the leading export nation in the world, we prospered. Companies, in turn, rewarded their employees with benefits and pensions. Wall Street in conjunction with foreign competition changed the game, and benevolent companies like GM are forced to their knees for doing the right thing for their employees in upholding the social contract of remaining in the US, paying a wage comparable to the rise of inflation and productivity/profits, and being good corporate citizens realizing the benefits to society as a whole by these attributes.
I challenge you to read up more on globalization. You are in Richmond, I assume. Qimonda’s demise is a direct result of globalization. The Reynolds plants are closing and moving overseas. Tech departments in many of the banks are farming their work over to India. The list goes on. I ask you what other industry is going to replace these jobs in our area? If these workers do get jobs, they will most likely be under-employed.
Those who advocate tax breaks for the rich under the guise that jobs are created are misguided. Companies that say they have to go overseas to compete, but the American consumer benefits visa-vie cheaper products in the market are looking in the short term. Would you rather have a cheap flat-screen TV, or a job?
Blaiming BIG GOVERNMENT is the easy way out because you cannot see the hidden hand that is going to diminish your standard of living. The great “America” that will force you to have insane healthcare costs, reduced salary, less options, while enriching the upper 2%, will eventually hit home for you at some point.
bcjs-You sure sound like the solid kind of American citizen that is sorely needed in this day of bumper sticker morality and endless entreaties for more and more entitlements.
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