I haven't studied the law as extensively as others have, but presumably since the penalty is based on your income and kicks in essentially as an additional tax, I would presume that it's based off of your tax return.
Originally Posted by jbravo_123
And what happens if you loose your job in February? You have to annie up for health insurance or be fined on top of not having insurance? Or not? That's what's fucking wrong with this Act. No one even READ it, as directed by Madam Speaker, let alone considered how to enact it. They catered to the oligarchs and now we ALL get to pay.
[First, I think you may be mistaking my previous post as some sort of advocacy on the merits of the AHA. It was not intended that way, but as a clarification to the OP's questions and to highlight the differences between Medicare and Medicaid.
Originally Posted by jbravo_123
How is either program any good if it excludes the largest demographic - uninsurred middle class folks.
[I do think it's particularly sad that we tout ourselves as a shining beacon of first world countries but we can't even do things like provide affordable health care to all of our citizens (which many other countries have been able to do while keeping costs down). I would love to see affordable health coverage for everyone, but given that we're not going to do that anytime soon, I believe we should focus our efforts first on covering those who have the hardest time getting coverage on their ow
Originally Posted by jbravo_123
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What is your definition of affordable healthcare coverage. Spending statistically deviant amounts on the last six or first six months of life? If so, then we disagree about not just affordable, but what is moral.
You mean the middle class right. Because the poor and the rich are covered. So, you're going to see that the ENTIRE middle class is going to get health care if they don't already have it. Or if they have it through their employer and their employer drops coverage.
[Second, I don't believe in an all or nothingsystem. Like most things, our health care system is a work in progress. Very few things on as large a scale as national health care, in the private nor public sector, ever go perfectly the first time - adjustments always have to be made. In our current situation, our society has deemed that it is better to cover those who need it the most (those who can afford it the least) as our first priority. Yes, someone's going to have to pay for it and currently, unfortunately the majority of that burden falls to the middle class (note the upper class, while making a much higher % of our income these days, doesn't actually pay that much of the burden)
Originally Posted by jbravo_123
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And HOW are we going to pay for this lofty experiment. Better yet, who pays? Specifically who pays; who gets covereage; and what kind of coverage?
[Yes, there will always be some poor people who will choose to stay in their current situation, sad as it is. However, I would like to believe that there are those who aren't happy with the way their current state is and are trying to move up out of it and those are the ones we should be giving a hand up.
Originally Posted by jbravo_123
No one chooses to be poor. I just don't have a romantic and lofty notion that they deserve better care than the middle class.