Obamacare Schadenfreude: It's Back!

You didn't think it would quit just because the calendar added a digit, did you?

Obamacare employer mandate kicks in Jan. 1

Obamacare’s insurance mandate on employers will quietly take effect for large companies Thursday, one year later than planned after a pair of unilateral delays fed into Republican claims the White House plays fast and loose with the implementation of its signature law.

Starting in 2015, companies with 100 or more workers have to provide affordable insurance to at least 70 percent of their employees or pay heavy fines under the “employer mandate,” which was supposed to take effect at the start of this year, alongside the health care law’s other key provisions.
. . .
But human resources departments will grapple with IRS reporting requirements from day one to document their compliance and avoid tax penalties, a task that can get Byzantine and expensive for companies with lots of part-time workers and seasonal workers, who add up to full-time “equivalents.”

The employer mandate has been a political football since the health care law passed in 2010, as critics say employers have stopped hiring or cut hours to stay under the mandate’s thresholds.

The White House delayed the mandate twice, moves that Republicans lambasted as political ploys to delay enforcement until after the midterm elections.

But now that the Preznit need never face the ballot box again, he can proceed with further complicating the lives of business people with no fear of consequences. Democrats in the Congress are not so fortunate.

Speaking of which, the cost of not playing just went up for individual tax payers too: ObamaCare fines rising in 2015, IRS prepares to collect

The ObamaCare-mandated fines for not having insurance are rising in 2015 -- and for the first time, will be collected by the Internal Revenue Service.

The individual requirement to buy health insurance went into effect earlier this year. But this coming tax season is the first time all taxpayers will have to report to the IRS whether they had health insurance for the prior year.

The fines for the 2014 year were relatively modest -- $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold for filing taxes), whichever is more.

But insurance scofflaws face a sharp increase if they don't get covered soon. The fine will jump in 2015 to $325 or 2 percent of income, whichever is higher. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures.

Tax dollars at work: 87% of new Obamacare users given federal aid

Some 87 percent of people who just signed up for Obamacare are getting financial assistance to lower their premiums, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

That is a jump from 80 percent during the last open enrollment period.

The department did not say how much it was offering to new Obamcare enrollees or what the total bill to taxpayers would be.

Basically, if Mitt Romney or Warren Buffett decided not to take salary from the companies they run, and no income from stocks due to a bad year, they would qualify for full Obamacare subsidies. It's based on income, not wealth.

This may not be true in all cases but As PJ Tattler points out: Obamacare: Even More of a Scam Than You Thought

Admit it: you knew it was a scam from the way it was pushed through. Now, however, it’s clear what the plan all along was: 1) make it mandatory, 2) put the weight of the IRS behind it, 3) make premiums cripplingly “affordable,” 4) offer a “subsidy” carrot, and 5) make the subsidy level just too low for the middle class, so that the class Obama and the Left hate most would bear most of the burden. In other words, reward your friends and punish your enemies.

Nice work, Democrats.

Dr. Jon Gruber, the gift whose past keep yielding Obamacare Schadenfreude: Obama Adviser Jonathan Gruber In 2009: Obamacare Will NOT Be Affordable

As Gruber continues to withhold documents while he awaits a call-back for more testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the new year, more shocking information is coming to light detailing the deceptions that went into the writing of the health-care law.

Gruber said that Obamacare had no cost controls in it and would not be affordable in an October 2009 policy brief, presented here exclusively by TheDC. At the time, Gruber had already personally counseled Obama in the Oval Office and served on Obama’s presidential transition team. Obama, meanwhile, told the American people that their premiums would go down dramatically.

“The problem is it starts to go hand in hand with the mandate; you can’t mandate insurance that’s not affordable. This is going to be a major issue,” Gruber admitted in an October 2, 2009 lecture, the transcript of which comprised the policy brief.

“So what’s different this time? Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”

They didn't care about controlling costs; they just wanted to give it away as cheap a possible to hook people into depending on the government for their health care; then, as always, rationing just happens naturally.

And despite the president’s pitches to the contrary, Obama also knew that his health care bill was unlikely to control costs, Gruber said.

“I wish that President Obama could have stood up and said, ‘You know, I don’t know if this bill is going to control costs. It might, it might not. We’re doing our best. But let me tell you what it’s going to do…” Gruber said on a San Francisco podcast in 2012.

New IRS rules crack down on nonprofit hospitals

The federal government is cracking down on nonprofit hospitals under ObamaCare in an attempt to prevent harsh collection practices and steep charges for the uninsured.

Newly finalized regulations from the Internal Revenue Service, announced Monday, will require nonprofit hospitals to “take an active role in improving the health of the communities” by making payment methods more fair and making costs more transparent.

For example, nonprofit hospitals are banned from asking for money in patients’ rooms or selling debt to third-party companies unless they make a “reasonable effort” to offer financial assistance. Each hospital must also take steps to improve the health of its community, including a semi-annual evaluation of the area’s “health needs.”

“For hospitals to be tax-exempt, they should be held to a higher standard,” Emily McMahon, a deputy assistant secretary for tax policy at the Department of the Treasury, wrote in a blog post Monday announcing the rules.

So how are non-profit hospitals supposed to be able to pay their bills if they can't effectively collect what's owed them?  It's pretty simple really; stop expending money on poor people who you expect to have trouble collecting from.