HEALTHCARE UPHELD!

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I had always thought that a "tax" was something applied to a product purchased, or money earned. This is a "tax" on NOT purchasing a product. They are really stretching the definition of taxation here. Do we live in some kind of a bizarro, 'down is up', 'white is black' world now?

It still walks and quacks like a penalty to me.

You may have thought that, but that is not the definition of a tax.

A tax is a payment by individuals to the government that is not a fee for service or a tariff. A tax may be levied as simply as by capitation, whereby individuals pay tax for no greater reason than being alive.

It sounds more like a FINE. What will this tax be used for if it is, indeed, a tax?

it's obvious what government is doing...trying to get away with charging by calling the charge a tax instead of a fine. A fine is a penalty for not doing something, a tax is a mandatory payment to the government for services and upkeep. Government should be honest about the fact this is not a tax. It is a penalty for not having health insurance.

No we just live in a country that has an extremely complicated tax code, that one has to wade through to understand. It keeps many lawyers employed.

An excise tax is an indirect tax. And, excise taxes are currently used as a penalty tax applied to ineligible transactions in retirement accounts. This penalty is assessed by and paid to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Currently there are over 30 excise taxes in Internal Revenue Code designed as a penalty for failure to act. But, generally it is referred to as an indirect tax.

So, it's a matter of rhetoric whether one calls it an indirect tax, an excise tax, a tax penalty, or a penalty. It is technically all of these terms that can credibly be used under the definition of an excise tax.

The democrats called it a penalty for not purchasing health care, in part because many politicians and voters don't like to hear the scary words tax and politics in the same sentence.

However, one would think that penalty or tax penalty would sound scarier than excise tax, per pictures of getting in trouble, and that is apparently exactly how many are picturing this excise tax, as something that is scary, even though exclusions in the new law has taken away IRS authority or power to assess criminal penalties, levies, or liens, resulting from not paying this excise tax, under sections of US code that provide the IRS the authority and power to enforce tax laws.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/excisetax.asp#ixzz1zJSJLSIh


Per the constitution congress has the power to lay and collect excise taxes for the general welfare of the United States. This excise tax is collected and used to fund health care for the general welfare of the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excise_tax_in_the_United_States



Romney called the mandate and penalty in his state "an individual responsibility program", another piece of rhetoric to smooth things over with his fellow politicians and to take some fear out of the penalty rhetoric for the general public.

Romney is going to have a hard time eating these words again in the coming months. Because, for those states that choose not to accept 100% medicaid reimbursement from the federal government for their citizens living in poverty, the responsibility of emergency health care, for those that cannot possibly afford coverage below the poverty level, who will not receive subsidies, falls back on the rest of the citizens of the state to pay through higher medical costs.

This is currently the case in most states, resulting in higher and higher insurance premiums in these states, as well, to cover those higher unfunded medical costs. Gingrich used a similar Romney rationale in supporting a mandate in the 90's as an alternative to the Republican feared Universal health care/public option alternatives.



http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/tax-or-penalty-both-campaigns-are-quick-to-define-courts-health-care-ruling-642690/

The tax laws are complicated enough, where five people can call the same basic tax process different terms denoting potential different actions. As delineating in my previous post, depending on whom one talks to it would be accurate to describe this as a tax, an excise tax, an indirect tax, a penalty, or a tax penalty. It's complicated enough where it took the supreme court, and an extremely intelligent chief justice to provide a ruling on what it is, per the law.

But, it is not a criminal penalty, which was key in the fact that no one is being forced by the government through potential criminal enforcement to purchase health care insurance. Unfortunately there are still many right wing pundits that continue to describe it as such, in hopes to instill enough fear in their supporters for them to make their way to voting booth in November.

It's now the governments job to squash the rumors, but so far they haven't effectively done this.

If the tax code and legal code, in general, wasn't as complicated as it is, one could have provided a better prediction on the ruling of the supreme court. It all comes down to interpretation of the laws as they exist and past legal rulings that have set precedents.

The law was written that it was a penalty instead of a tax, but the Supreme Court ruled that it could be viewed as a tax and a penalty, per applicable tax code and past rulings.

How is a legal mandate to purchase something a tax?

The penalty associated with the mandated purchase of insurance is a fine, not a tax.

ruveyn

The mandate penalty is not defined as a fine in the supreme court ruling, but that is an appropriate synonym for penalty, per a monetary penalty.

The government's alternate argument to the supreme court was in Congress' power to tax. That argument was found acceptable per the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Roberts linked and quoted below.

The bolded excerpt from the quote below states "the ACA nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS. And Congress's choice of language--stating that individuals 'shall"obtain insurance or pay a "penalty"----does not require reading section 5000A as punishing unlawful conduct." The opinion of Justice Roberts also states "it may also be read as imposing a tax on those who go without insurance."

In addition per Chief Justice Roberts opinion bolded below:

"Such an analysis suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax."

The court ruled in favor of this opinion, so for constitutional purposes the shared responsibility payment is considered a tax. It can still be referred to as a mandate penalty per non-constitutional purposes but within those constitutional parameters per Congress's authority to tax, it is defined as a tax by the Supreme Court.

Technically per the ACA, the penalty is collected as an excise tax covered by IRS code that enforces collection of excise taxes, with the exclusion that no criminal penalties, levies, or liens will imposed. As already evidenced above excise taxes are generally considered indirect taxes, and sometimes are referred to as tax penalties, of which about half of those excise taxes in the internal revenue code are designed as penalties for failure to act.



http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf



It appears that a careful wording of the act was provided to both avoid the political fallout of tax rhetoric, as well as designing per substance what was labeled as a mandate penalty as a tax per how it would be collected by the IRS. It was a bit of a risky move, in how the courts might determine constitutionality, if the mandate penalty language was challenged, but there really was no other choice to do it this way, for any potential passage of the act.

It provides evidence that the Supreme Court Chief Justice was not consciously biased in this decision per a partisan element, which 75% of those offering professional odds seemed to count on, at least in part.

I suspect that Obama understood completely, when he signed the bill, that it could be found constitutional based on legal code and legal precedents as they stand, based on Congress's power to tax, if the mandate was challenged, and could only hope that justice would prevail if that alternative argument was necessary.

The fact that he was a constitutional law professor at Harvard, would have certainly lent the expertise to form an opinion of his own. Most politicians don't have that personal advantage.

Obama was the right President at the right time, Pelosi was the right speaker of the house at the right time, and Chief Justice Roberts was the right Chief Justice at the right time. Take away any of these three evidenced unusual figures in history and we wouldn't likely be having this conversation now.

While you or I might not agree with all of Obama's policies, and what resulted as health care reform, I would not underestimate his intelligence or his street smarts; he and the rest of the democrats made a gamble and it paid off. Now their challenge is to convince the majority of the public that this is a good thing.

That's going to require more than intelligence or street smarts, it's going to require a concerted effort at communication that everyone can understand, including those that are not as advantaged in life as others.

This is where the expertise of right wing radio hosts/Fox media hosts come in to play. The democrats need an advantage like that to spread a message to reach more people, but so far the major target audience appears to be those on the internet; some people are likely falling through the cracks, that right wing radio show hosts/Fox still dominant.

The summer when I was 16 and a half, when I was away at Philmont Scout Ranch, our house got flooded. My parents were perhaps moving toward divorce. My mom may have decided this was not the time to get a divorce. The flood added to the stress. The fact that the insurance company was delaying and low-balling added to the stress.

My dad became violent again. My mom asked him to move out. He tricked her. He said, "______, it's not worth it. Call ______." [the contractor my mom wanted to use, what they had been arguing about before he committed violence]. Well, that's not why she asked him to move out. She asked him to move out because he committed violence. But my mom got stuck, being aspie and logical, she focused on the specific content of what he had just said. She didn't have a general statement such as, 'I'm asking you to move out.'

I despise insurance companies.

No, I can't entirely blame the goddam insurance company for my dad's violence, or evenlargely blame them. But when they run the common practice of delay and giving a low-ball settlement figure, they are attempting to take advantage of a person's or family's desperation, and that is dirty business. As a teenage boy what I wanted to see was the CEO of the company hauled before a judge and publicly dressed down. And in a more just business system that may actually happen. Or, the judge could just eyeball the situation and the claim and set a reasonable figure. And if the company slightly overpays us, Oh well, they could sue us and go the long way where the case comes to court two years down the road.

I think it's the wrong approach. Give people what they want and they will buy it. Do not try to force them to buy stuff they think is overpriced and poor quality. The Supreme Court should have taken that into consideration.

President Obama said he created the Affordable Health Care Act because he thought it would help people and make the world a better place and it might help certain ones but it also will create a lot of expense the middle class might not be able to afford.

While it has been widely reported that health insurance lobby supported supported health care reform and a mandate over the potential of universal health care or a public option, there is evidence that at the same time they covertly lobbed against the health care reform act to avoid the Medical Loss Ratio MLR provision of the ACA projected this August to require Insurance companies to refund 1.1 Billion dollars back to their customers.

The health insurance lobby covertly spent over a 100 million dollars to fund efforts against the passage of the legislation.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/06/25/busted-health-insurers-secretly-spent-huge-to-defeat-health-care-reform-while-pretending-to-support-obamacare/2/

So, I guess if no criminal penalties, levies, or liens will imposed, people can tell the government to piss off and not pay the fine,tax or whatever legalese they want to call it.

There was one realistically attainable other option that congress was willing to entertain and almost successful in achieving, and that was to do nothing.

That option would have resulted in the 3.1 million individuals currently covered under their parents plans from 19 to 25, not afforded that opportunity, as well as those children with preexisting conditions, including Autism, in some private insurance plans, from not being afforded the ability to gain coverage. These are not low income folks, these are middle income folks that otherwise would not be able to provide their children, both under the age of 19 and over the age of 19 coverage.

And that's not just a problem for those individuals that may not have the means to go on to college and potentially have a better opportunity for a job that provides health benefits, as close to 50% of college graduates age 25 and below are currently reported unemployed, and likely depending on their parents for continued subsistence, including insurance coverage.

Without that coverage if there is an accident or an illness, it can mean exhaustion of the parents life savings to pay for those adult children's medical bills, if they have any savings left from sending their children to college.

Lower income individuals have yet to receive much help from the act as it exists, and now many of the lowest income individuals will have to rely on the compassion of their politicians in their respective states, to accept 100% reimbursement from the government to be covered under medicaid.

But, without the subsidies for those making up 4 times more than the poverty rate, and the requirement to purchase coverage, there would have been no way the insurance companies would have agreed to those current provisions that are already benefiting the middle class.

The health insurance lobby while openly supporting this effort, through the recent evidence of their covert lobbying efforts of over $100 million dollars at the same time, were working against health care reform. The intention if possible, it appears of that lobbying effort, was business as usual, as has been the republican policy for healthcare reform for close to the decade where a republican administration was in place.

Another result now, a new requirement in place, as part of healthcare reform, is that Insurance companies must provide money back to the customer, in the form of rebates, when they don't meet the 80% standard of reinvesting profits back for coverage of their customers.

In August that's 1.1 Billion dollars coming back into the economy, and in part, the middle class, from the insurance companies, that otherwise would not have been required to meet this standard, if was not for this change in law.

I agree that there will likely be some discomfort for individuals to pay for insurance in the middle class or alternately pay an excise tax if they choose not to, but that discomfort is not reasonably comparable to those individuals that could possible die from chronic health conditions as a lack of access or affordable options for insurance coverage, as well as the potential financial difficulties they face if they attempt to sell everything they own to save the life of a loved one.

Particularly, considering that there are waivers for actual financial hardships, and no criminal penalties, levies, or liens imposed for that fail to pay the penalty.

I think we all could come up with better ways to do this; it's a majority opinion among the experts that a single payer or public option would have reduced costs, above and beyond this plan, but we rely on congress to come to these agreements, and it is evidenced as not possible for compromise to be reached.

So, what we are left with is what was made possible, as an effective means to potentially meet any positive effect above and beyond the circumstances that existed in 2009.

Those results are already evidenced as benefiting millions of individuals, mostly in the middle class. I can't see how the only realistic alternative achievable for congress to do nothing, would have benefited anyone.

Watching that process unfold, it really appeared almost as a miracle that congress was able to achieve anything, per healthcare reform. That is not just a republican issue, that is a bi-partisan issue. And health care premiums had nearly doubled in a decade before this legislation was put in place, there wasn't any sign of a slow down in that increase before this plan was put into place.

1.1 billion dollars is a miniscule amount as compared to the totality of money individuals invest in their premiums in a year, but it is something coming back to those individuals, that would not likely have been part of reality, before the health care reform act was put in place.

I've been following this thing fairly closely for years now, but had no idea that my insurance company is required to refund $27 million dollars back to their customers in my state. I just came across that information today, and had no idea this was going to happen on August 1st. It's likely going to be a pleasant surprise for millions of individuals across the country.

It is the first time that health insurance companies have ever provided a refund to their customers, per the link, and it is something they will be required to do every year from now on, for those companies that do not meet government standards of re-investment, per the health care reform act. This is the link below that shows the companies per state and total amounts required refunded back to their customers.

http://yourhealthsecurity.org/health-insurance-refund-map

Yes, they can avoid criminal penalties, levies, and liens, however the government will still have the ability to collect the penalties through potential tax refunds or government appropriations to the public such as the stimulus rebates that were provided several years back.

Many people use tax refunds as an interest free loan for the government, as a savings account due the first several months of each year.

These habits can be hard to break, except for the most detailed oriented people that closely adjust their with-holding taxes to insure they neither owe too much or are refunded money from the IRS.

It will probably be another reason for some people to take their taxes to an accounting service instead of doing it themselves. Average refunds for 2012 were $3000; that will be quite an adjustment for some to make. But, it is a win-win scenario in the long run, considering that individuals are already providing an interest free loan to the government when that money could be invested on a monthly basis, instead, for some kind of return investment, instead of a $3000 average loan to the government, on an annual basis.

The minimum penalty is $695 per individual not covered by insurance when the fine is fully in place with a $2,250 cap for a family, still well below the average IRS refund at $3,000.

It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for a family of 4, with an individual covered at age 40, with a median national income of approximately $47,000 to forgo a health insurance policy covering the entire family for a little under $3,000 annually for premiums, and subsidized by the government for over $9,000 for those premiums, instead of the likely hood on average that most individuals are going to keep their deductions as is, and end up having $2,250 deducted from their $3,000 tax refund at the end of the year to pay the penalty, if 4 or more individuals are in that family.

Tax credits are still generous for a family of four, and require not only fewer deductions but additional money taken out of one's pay check each month, to avoid the refund at the end of the year.

Close to 50 million individuals in the US have been determined to be among the uninsured, and it is questionable now with state options to forgo 100% of reimbursement for medicaid expansion as to what portion of the 16 million individuals that were anticipated to be covered by expanded medicaid coverage out of the total of 32 million total projected individuals to be covered under the new plan will be eligible.

Hopefully republican dominated states will show some concern for the impoverished in their states. If they don't there are no options for some, not even subsidies for those whom make below 100% of the poverty level.

While a minority of individuals may choose to pursue and exercise their option to not purchase insurance as well as avoid the tax penalty, if they take the time and effort to adjust their with holding tax, there are some that face potential life or death consequences that would love to have the opportunity to purchase coverage with subsidies, or be covered with no premiums with medicaid if they fall below the 133% poverty level among those whom will be at the mercy of their partisan-politics state governments, as those states decide whether or not to accept the money from the government for medicaid expansion to cover those individuals.

That's a pretty detailed explanation, but when one weighs all the details, it's a win-win scenario for those that wish to purchase insurance coverage and are afforded that opportunity by this new law, and a win-win scenario for those that don't want to purchase it, and/or are dead set, through adjusting their withholding tax, against paying their share of the "insurance responsibility" for the general welfare of those in the country, per an excise tax, imposed, so the majority of those that currently do not have insurance will have a choice or potential for coverage, that otherwise they would not have.

On top of that as detailed in the last few posts, many people already insured are going to get a health insurance refund check in the mail, as a result of the health care reform measures that are already in place, as well as in years to come.

This benefit required no effort at all for some; it was accomplished by some in congress, a few of which lost their political careers, by standing up for what they believed was a worthwhile potential benefit for their constituents. Those checks won't be stamped per partisan persuasion, and it's not likely many are going to send the checks back to the insurance companies, in protest over healthcare reform or the presence of the President in Office.

Hopefully some of those same individuals, strongly influenced by partisan politics, in those states whom are determining whether or not they will have concern for their fellow citizens whom are less economically and health advantaged, will allow the government to provide the part of the benefit of the health care reform act, to cover those individuals.

There were quite a few states that initially opposed the Obama stimulus funds, but in the end all participated. Funding often speaks louder than political rhetoric.

Free money stolen from someone else. Who could refuse that?

ruveyn

As long as the penalty stays at $695, I'll just adjust my withholding and let it eat up my refund. It'll me MUCH cheaper than getting insurance, especially since I'm a smoker. I'll bet there is nothing in the ACA preventing insurance companies from charging smokers significantly more.

What would be cool is if all that extra money I pay in tobacco taxes go towards special insurance for smokers.