....but a very quick demand for
Those Americans who didn’t get health insurance last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS "asks" them to fork over their ObamaCare penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting.
The [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act requires those who didn’t have insurance last year and didn’t qualify for one of the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1% of their household income as their penalty.
“People would hear the $95, quit listening, and make an assumption that that was what their penalty was going to be,” said Chuck Lovelace, vice president of affordable care for Liberty Tax Service. “I think that a lot of people will be surprised when they get in there and find out that their penalty is [based] on their household income.”
The penalty is designed to prod Americans to buy insurance and the penalty for not having it is scheduled to rise considerably: to a $325 minimum or 2% of income in 2015, and to a $695 minimum or 2.5% of income in 2016.
The vast majority of Americans never pay attention to politics other than for a few weeks before presidential elections every four years. A smaller proportion, before congressional elections every couple of years. And then there are the political junkies like thee and us, who pay attention to it every day, like the Founding Fathers expected of a vigilant populace who would not easily allow the Republic they'd been give to be taken away from them and "fundamentally transformed". The vast majority vote as the media tells them to vote, pat them on their heads, and send them back to the lemming preserve. The vast majority heard the words "universal care" and "bending the cost curve downward" and that's all they needed to hear. After all, who could argue with a miraculous deal like that? And so they tuned out the rest, stopped paying attention, and went on their fat, dumb, and happy way, until a little over a year ago, when policy cancellation notices by the millions started going out because the individual plans their demigod ironcladdedly promised they could keep no longer "officially" qualified under ObamaCare "standards".
But that's still a small percentage of the vast majority of Americans. However, EVERYBODY has to file a tax return every year, now the piper is going to be paid, and the vast majority of Americans are going to learn, to their angered chagrin, that their votes really do have consequences.
It'll be difficult for me to muster up much sympathy for the 51% when that day arrives. It really will.
Exit question: Care to place any bets on whether there'll be any more Obama Executive decrees further deferring the Individual and Employer Mandates? I wouldn't take those wagers.
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