A mistake in the drafting of ObamaCare leaves families at risk of paying thousands of dollars more for their health insurance than was heretofore expected.
In the Affordable Care Act, the authors wrote that 9.5% of an employee’s household income was the upper limit of what they thought was “affordable.” They thought that if an employer offered health insurance for 9.5% or less of the employee’s income, the employee would not look for subsidized coverage through the ObamaCare exchanges.
The problem is that the writing in ObamaCare does not mention the employee’s family. Thus if the employee keeps the employer’s health plan, but the plan does not include the family, the employee would not be able to get subsidized help and would pay thousands of dollars more to cover his/her family.
Insurance and health care analysts have estimated that up to half a million children could be uninsured as a result. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated the average yearly cost for an individual’s health insurance to be $5,600; the average cost for a family was penciled in at $15,700.
Kosali Simon, a professor of public affairs at Indiana University, said, “We saw this two-and-a-half years ago and thought, ‘Has anyone else noticed this?’ Everyone said, ‘No, no. You must be wrong.’ But we weren’t, and that’s going to leave a lot of people out.”
Even Bill Clinton, when he defended ObamaCare in a speech early in September, admitted there was a problem, admitting that in his estimation, it allowed that employees making between $20,000 and $30,000 whose coverage from their employers does not include their families would have to find additional insurance and would not qualify health care subsidies.
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