Monday, June 8, 2009

Your Bill for Health Care Reform Will Be Arriving Soon

As Congress and the President fire up continued talks on health care "reform", the problem of paying for providing the uninsured with health insurance is starting to be addressed. You will never guess who Congress has in mind to pay for it all...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31106408/

Yep, its going to be the currently insured - at minimum. Just in case you didn't know this, if your employer is offering health insurance, he or she kicks in a good chunk of change every month to pay for that insurance. At a company I worked for a few years ago, it was public knowledge what the Company paid on your behalf for insurance. In my case, it was about $1,200 per month. Assuming health care costs have not gone up and I still worked there, that would mean that the Zane Family is receiving the benefit of $14,400 per year for health insurance. Right now, that benefit is received tax free. Under the proposal now being considered by Congress, that would mean that I would have to pay taxes on some portion of that income to cover somebody else's insurance. Assuming that my marginal tax bracket is 25%, I could be asked to kick in up to an additional $3,600 for other people's insurance.

Want to hear something scary? The President himself told Senators that he would back this outrage, even though he specifically campained against it when running against John McCain. In fact, he hammered McCain on this very point. The article even includes a video clip of the President taking McCain to task about taxing these benefits. How do you spell hypocrite? O-B-A-M-A.

The article blesses us with a photo of illustrious Senator Max Baucus of Montana, who seems to favor taxing insurance benefits. His rationale? Taxing those benefits would be "fairer and more equitable for everyone". HUH??? How is sucking my hard-earned money up and using it to pay somebody else's health insurance fairer and more equitable to me? He did say "everyone" did he not? Obviously, when the liberally stupid mention fairness and equity, they really mean paying off the people who put them in power by transferring the wealth of others. Fair and equitable my A**! If you live in Montana and don't vote Maxie out of office, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. Get off your lazy butt and go to the polls and send him packing.

Want to know what your additional tax bill will be? Assume that your employer spends about $1,000/month on your insurance. Also, assuming you are married and the government taxes the entire benefit, your bill will be as follows (Citizen Zane can find tax tables online!):

$1,200 if your taxable income is less than $15,650
$1,800 if your taxable income is between $15,650 and $63,700
$3,000 if your taxable income is between $63,700 and $128,500
$3,360 if your taxable income is between $128,500 and $195,850

I am guessing that there will be some portion of the benefit that is exempt, especially for the lower income groups, and that the above calculations would be on the high side. But, with this wacky Congress, you never can tell. Remember how fired up we all were about soaking the rich to pay for everything???? You can now look your insured a** in the mirror and spot the rich guy who will be paying - Citizen Zane

2 comments:

  1. After dealing with that, we can all be like this if only we are so lucky...
    By Jim Christie: Reuters
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090610/pl_nm/us_economy_california_revenues

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  2. Holy smokes - I got out of California just in time! Thank you for the article. I'm pretty sure that the Feds will eventually have to back California and fill in some of that short fall because the state is completely tapped out. Expect to pile some of that onto the national debt that we can pay later. I at least got my money's worth when I lived there. Some poor saps in the Midwest will be paying for this mess and they didn't even get to enjoy the sunshine!

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