Millions of smokers could be priced out of healthcare insurance in 2014 when the full implementation of Obamacare allows insurance providers to charge a smokers penalty in an obscure provision of the law.
Many of these smokers will soon wish that the House Democrats, under Nancy Pelosi, had read the bill before they passed it.
Excerpt:
The Affordable Care Act — “Obamacare” to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.
For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.
A higher percentage of lower income people smoke than do higher income people and work in jobs that usually do not have health insurance and would fall under Obamacare. Therefore, many lower income smokers may not be able to afford the 50% higher premiums.
Excerpt:
Insurers won’t be allowed to charge more under the overhaul for people who are overweight, or have a health condition like a bad back or a heart that skips beats — but they can charge more if a person smokes.
First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.
Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging less to younger ones.
And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.
Remember, at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Aug. 11, 2009, President Barack Obama repeated a line he’s used many times in describing his health care proposal: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
Apparently, President Obama didn’t read the provisions of Obamacare either.
I guess that plus the price of smokes will encourage everyone to go cold turkey which might add a few years to their life. Now if we can get the food industry to cut out high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil we will have gone a long way to improve the nation’s health.
Using the new fight song “if it saves just one life, we should try”, I would expect a ban on cigarettes, at least the high-powered , unnecessary ones. Imagine the same enthusiasm to restrict a real killing machine that takes hundreds of thousands of lives each year….instead of 20 from a certain kind of scary looking gun.
I am waiting for the Nanny-State Regime to mandate scales at all restaurants, so that patrons can be weighed, and their menus adjusted accordingly. After all, “if it saves just one life, we should try’.
I expect this regime to convert as much as possible to a class-based cost system. Fuel prices can’t possibly be “fair” with everyone paying the same price per gallon. We are already seeing free Obamaphones, and even locally with the Machesney Parks new utility tax, which reimburses 100% of the huge $8 tax to the less fortunate, who are being forced to choose between cigarettes and utility taxes. (through no fault of their own as the prez would say)
Ahhh, yes, the “Nanny State” that the wingnuts are always jabbering about. But, it’s not a nanny-state when the GOP wants to tell a woman what to do with her body and wants to bail out corrupt companies that lose taxpayer money.
Want to square that one up for me, snuss? Ted? You don’t want government to try to legislate against poor personal health choices but you’re cool telling a woman what she can or can’t do with her body? And, your view of free-market capitalism is that it’s OK to privatize the profits but we must socialize the losses. Do I have that right?
Monkey, regardling abortion, I’m not telling women what they can do with their bodies, but what they can’t do to the 55M bodies that they have destroyed in the last 40 years! Remember, monkey, that over 50% of those aborted bodies are female! What did they get to do with their bodies?
Also, I’m just as much against corporate welfare as the regular kind – both take taxpayers earnings to give to others that have not earned the money. And the government is singling out smoking, discriminating against one bad habit – what about obesity, or the left wingnut’s poor personal health choices – having babies out of wedlock that others have to pay for, along and their birth control pills and abortion drugs, drinking to excess, doing illegal drugs and all those other victimless crimes that the left wingnuts love to justify.
BTW, if smoking rates drop, how will we pay for those Liberal programs funded by cigarette taxes?
Good point, snuss!
You wingnuts can’t have it both ways. You can’t legislate control over a women’s body and then claim to want to have government out of people’s lives. The only way to do that is to officially relegate women to “second-class” citizen status which, I guess, is what many of you wingnuts actually want to do.
Smoking is a choice, as you know. Obesity, very often, is not, and involves a lot of other issues than simply eating too many Oreos. Having a baby out of wedlock is a choice, for sure. But, so is the GOP’s constant insistence that we shouldn’t allow for insurance plans to cover birth control or teach sex ed to kids. Amazingly, your party continues to wander aimlessly in the wilderness, seemingly stuck in some other time period, out of touch with Americans and devoid of basic common sense.
monkey – you skipped over a portion of my comment – “what they can’t do to the 55M bodies that they have destroyed in the last 40 years! Remember, monkey, that over 50% of those aborted bodies are female!”
What do you say about this issue and women’s bodies?
Ted,
So you equate an embryo/fetus to the life of an adult, fully-functional human being? Interesting.
Play this game, bet you don’t guess correctly!
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/embryo/embryoflash.html
Do you believe that life begins at conception? At a heart beat? Where exactly?
On a related note, I read that the illegal immigrant advocates claim that we need more immigrants, illegal and otherwise, because our National birth rate is dropping. Had all these aborted humans (and, yes, they ARE human) been born, wouldn’t that change the birth rate significantly?
Snuss,
It might and it might not. How many women who have an abortion go on to have 2+ kids later in life that might have not otherwise done so if they kept the first child? How many of those mothers would have been prevented from attaining advanced education or finding a husband if they had a child at 15-19 or in college or whatever the situation? You can’t just say that those 55 million aborted babies would be a net 55 million+ to our population. It would probably increase our population overall, but sadly for you this issue was decided FORTY YEARS AGO by the supreme court.
Also, I am sorry but a fertilized egg is NOT a human life. Neither is an embryo. Look up monozygotic twins and chimeras. You can’t play this game that 1 fertilized egg = 1 human life/soul. It is a scientific inaccuracy. I know you derive your opinion from a holy text, but given the history of science vs. religion God seems about as all knowing as a dude from the 1st century. I will go back to reading about my “athiestic evolution” and”evil evidence-based medicine” and whatever other science-hating rubbish many posters on this site have posted over the past few months.
Ted: I skipped over it on purpose due to its irrelevancy to the conversation here. And, I’ll refer you to CJR1′s comment about a fertilized egg NOT being a human life. The post is correct; it’s not. Much as you wingnuts want to justify controlling a woman’s body by claiming that “abortions murder babies,” it’s just not true. Apparently, you skipped over MY comment about restricting birth control and the teaching of sex ed and it’s impact on unplanned pregnancies.
Most polls find that Americans now believe that abortion should be legal but that we should take steps to make it as unnecessary as possible. That includes easy access to birth control and comprehensive sex education that teaches about birth control, abstinence, STDs and the consequences of getting pregnant. Is that so unreasonable?
Unfortunately, the Democrat falsehood of keeping abortions “legal, but rare” is a fallacy. They allow schools to take minor children to get abortions, without notifying the parents. These abortion providers (Planned Parenthood, for example) do not report the pregnancy of these minor children, so statutory (or actual) rape cases can’t be investigated, nor do they provide tissue samples to use for DNA evidence. Third-trimester abortions are done for frivolous reasons, rather than medical necessity. What ever happened to personal responsibility, and living with the consequences of your actions? But, by all means, give support to these young women, so they can either raise these children, or give them up for adoption. Just don’t condemn these innocents to death.
You can call the babies whatever you wish to justify abortion, Monkey. You are simply in denial that 55 million human beings have been killed for the cruelest of reasons – inconvenience!
Look at the babies in the womb at 8 and 9 months, when they are aborted or even if they are born alive – and I’ll bet anyone can tell the difference at that gestation period – what a stupid argument CJR1 used with his game.
Your president, Obama, refused to even vote for a bill that would have spared the aborted babies lives, if they survived the abortion – what a ass.
I love it when wingnuts become even more unhinged.
Snuss: proof of “schools taking minor children to get abortions.”? Proof of the other craziness you cite in your latest comment? Proof meaning statistical proof that what you cite is happening OFTEN, not one outlier used to justify your ridiculous comment. I’ll wait patiently.
Ted: abortions at 8 or 9 months? Is that what you’re implying or did you mean weeks? Tissue at six weeks development is not a human. Tissue at 12 weeks development is not a human. You need to do better than this. Calling the president an “ass?” Classy. Keep up the “fact-based” commentary.
Monkey, the statement concerning Obama is fact-based. However, I should have modified the noun with “arrogant.”
Typical, Ted. Ignore the other parts of my post and share further proof that the President’s re-election is driving you wingnuts insane.
Parents of school children in Seattle are learning a shocking lesson, when it comes to some very important decisions they don’t have a say. The mother of a 15-year old girl recently discovered that Ballard High School helped her daughter get an abortion and never informed her.
But it doesn’t end there. The school can also send children off campus for mental health care and drug addiction treatment without their parents ever knowing. Supporters say the confidentiality allows teens who are too afraid to tell mom and dad to get necessary treatment.
Parents signed consent forms for off-school treatment thinking it was limited to emergency health care when the parents could not be reached. But the teen health clinics at 14 Seattle schools are about much more. They have a full-time registered nurse, counselor and nursing assistant on hand to help kids with more sensitive issues.
When the 15-year old girl’s pregnancy was confirmed, they counseled her on the options. The mother says they encouraged her to have an abortion and not tell her parents. She claims her daughter was told that if she informed her parents they would have to pay for the abortion, otherwise it’s free.
Read more: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/03/25/school-abortion-and-more/
California Law Provides Minors with School-assisted Abortions Without Parental Notification
Your Daughter Can Get an Abortion in California Without Your Knowledge, Just Ask Her School
Read more at: http://voices.yahoo.com/california-law-provides-minors-school-assisted-3681774.html?cat=4
On the plus side, Ted said nothing at all about the FACT that a fertilized egg is not a human life. At least that is progress.
Can this be true?
“In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.
Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.
The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-cheapest-obamacare-plan-will-be-20000-family
“It turns out that the Affordable Care Act, which is also known as Obamacare, is not so affordable after all.
Nearly 500,000 children, under Obamacare, will still lack health insurance because many poor families will not qualify to get government assistance to buy health insurance because of how Congress defined “affordable.”
Under the IRS regulations released on Wednesday, families that cannot “afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own.”
Congress said “affordable” meant Obamacare plans cannot be “more than 9.5 percent of family income.” But under the new IRS rules, “people with coverage the law considers affordable cannot get subsidies to go into the new insurance markets,” because what counts as “affordable” is keyed to the cost of insurance for an individual worker and not families.
Since the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that “a typical workplace plan costs about $5,600 for an individual worker” while the average family plan costs $15,700, family members of workers whose employers do not “chip in” for family coverage could be out of luck. They will not be able to make up the difference and will not qualify for Obamacare subsidies.
It is unclear how many people this “glitch” will impact, and the IRS will not subject families impacted by this “glitch” to a tax penalty.
Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, an advocacy group for children, estimated nearly 500,000 children could remain uninsured.
“The children’s community is disappointed by the administration’s decision to deny access to coverage for children based on a bogus definition of affordability,” he said.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/01/Obamacare-Glitch-Cuts-Out-Poor-Families
Of course, this means that “single-payer” (government) insurance will HAVE to be implemented, to cover those who can no longer afford private insurance, thanks to the cost increases that ObamaCare created (just as the Obama Regime planned it).
@cjr1: That fertilized egg contains unique HUMAN DNA. If allowed to develop, it won’t grow into a fish, a cat, a pigeon, or a pig, it will be a human being.
Snuss,
See, that is the thing. It does contain human DNA, but it is often NOT unique. Sometimes it splits into twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc. and makes 2, 3, or 4 sets of NOT unique DNA. Sometimes 2 “unique” DNA fertilizations merge to form a chimera, which in a human you may never even detect.
I agree with you on one point. IF ALLOWED TO DEVELOP it will be a human being. Agreed 100%. UNTIL it develops, however, it is not a human. A clump of cells and an infant are not the same thing, thank you for agreeing with me.
But, if it isn’t human, what is it? At what point does it meet your standards for human life? When it’s heart begins to beat,? When brain waves are detected? When it responds to external stimuli? Or, when it exits it’s mother’s womb? Perhaps we should wait until this being is five or six, before deciding whether to keep it, or kill it. After all, it IS “choice”.