Michael

Yah, that was on CNN about a week ago. What they did is no different from any other large business do. After they get caught, they get a slap on the wrist and promise not to do it again but don't even admit that they did anything wrong.

dakota44

That's a given. The most troubling thing is that a pharmaceutical company, a critical component of health care, is too big to punish for killing people or falsely promoting drugs at great risk to others. It seems to me a monopoly that needs to be broken up.

Ash UK/US

Yup I understand what you say but the point I am getting at is people who believe people should only have children if they can afford them and should be taxed/pay higher health care coverage than those who don't... So I can have a baby when my husband is earning a 100K then he loses his job we spend our life savings on living/COBRA then what?

Michael

In an earlier post I stated that the tax credit subsidy will be given when you file your tax return.

Upon further investigation, it appears that the subsidy can be advanceable but will be refundable if you received too large of a subsidy based on your final salary for the year.

Michael

Fortunately health care reform was designed by sensible people.

A family of four with a head of household at 56 making about $41,000 per year will pay about 40% less for health insurance premiums as compared to the premiums paid by a single person making the same salary. That tries to compensate for the added expenses that will occur for the larger family.

The same family making $82,000 (400% of poverty level) will pay about twice as much for health insurance premiums as a single person making $43,000 (400% of poverty level). That seems to be fair since the family is paying health insurance premiums for two adults but is making about twice as much money.

Age makes a difference because premiums are lower if the head of household is younger and the ratio will end up being more than 2 to 1 if both a single person of the same age and a family of four are both making 400% of poverty level. Even though the ratio is greater than 2 to 1, the premiums for each will be less than they are for older people.

However, it seems that health care reform overall was well designed taking into consideration the cost of raising children.

Now as far as getting laid off, no one can predict the future but at least health care reform is designed to relieve some of the health care costs for a family based on family size and income.

chartreuse

This isn't about Class War, no matter how much you want it to be. It's about the govt taking money from poor folks without children, in order to give it to poor folks with children. Effectively, it's a fine on the poor for not breeding.

The only upper crust involved are the ones who wrote the legislation.

chartreuse

I understand that the calculator you found doesn't give you a "Family of two with no kids" option, but that's what you ought to be comparing with your family of four, in order to generate a meaningful comparison. That said, picking incomes at the 400% mark also serves to obscure the facts, plus you're being misleading in the above as your hypothetical family are paying premiums for four people, not two as you claim. So let's look at something more realistic.

Consider a typical, low income family. Mid 30s - say 35, earning 35,000 combined.

With two kids, they'll be at 159% of poverty level and will pay $1,541.

With no kids and the same income, they'll be at 240% of poverty level. There's two ways to estimate what they'll pay, using the calculator:
1. Take the premium for a single person at 240%FPL ($25,992) which is $2,001 and double it, giving $4,002.
2. Take the premium for a family of four at 240%FPL ($52,920) which is $4,075.

The fact that these come out within a few bucks of each other suggests we're on the right track.

So there you have it. A typical mid-30s low income couple will be fined £2,500 a year as their punishment for not having kids. That's worse than what they fine you for drink driving round our way.

Michael

I suspect your calculations are wrong. The one thing you will notice is that there is the same cap on premium as percentage of income and at 159%FPL or 240%FPL for both singles as well as a family of four. Therefore a family without children will have a 240%FPL equaling $35,000 and with likely the same cap percentage as a family of four, they should be paying less than a family of four at 240FPL or $52,920.

In most cases it appears that the cap as a percentage of income is the overriding factor. I agree that the cap as a percentage of salary will likely be slightly higher for a childless couple as compared to a family of four with the same incomes but different FPLs.

From what I can see, there normally isn't any penalty for childless couples but just that couples with children are normally not penalized with additional health care premiums.

chartreuse

I should hope that folks on $35K would pay less than folks on $53K, otherwise what would be the point? That's why I also ran the numbers on a single person at 240%FPL, to bracket the range - and it's a very short range, just $73.

Fact is, absent the detailed formulae for childless couples, we're speculating. But I think the range I've identified is robust and best represents they typical low income family.

Now that's just sophistry.

Michael

You are the one that is speculating. You are not taking into account the cap in your example.

In the case of a single person, the cap at the same salary of a family of 4 is only about 1% higher for lower incomes but the total premium is less for the single person so he can possibly get hit with the full premium. Therefore I suspect the cap for a childless couple would be less than that and the total premiums would likely be about double, so their cost would likely be limited by the cap.

A family of four would likely have a higher total premium than a childless couple but eithers cost of the premium would likely be restricted by the cap.

The major advantage appears to be married couples (either childless or with children) since their premiums would appear to be more likely to be restricted by the cap when incomes are the same as a single person. Families with children seem to have only a slight advantage over childless families.

chartreuse

Nope, your single person at 159%FPL is paying roughly 2/3 of the total premium. Like I said we're both speculating. That said, let's play with that. The cap is 6.3% and 200%FPL and 8.05 at 250%FPL. Assuming it's linear (speculation again) that would give us 7.7% at 240%FPL, or $2,695 at $35,000.

So, best case the childless couple pay $2,700, versus $1,500 for the couple with two kids. It's still a $1,200 fine, albeit half the worst case scenario.

Michael

Use actual figures (not FPL) that are the same exact same amount for a family of four and a single person and you will see that the cap is almost the same. The only reason that the single person paid as much as he paid is becuse he paid a higher percentage of the premium before the cap restricted the amount. That will not occur when the total premium is double for a childless couple.

If the cap is nearly the same for a childless family as a family of 4 with the same incomes, there can't be a significant difference in their premium cost (unless the childless family exceeds 400% FPL) since the premiums are restricted by the cap.

chartreuse

No, because the caps, subsidies etc are all calculated on earnings as a percentage of FPL and that is very different for a single person versus a couple.

If, again. Your argument appears to be "It's not unfair because it won't be unfair if the figures that we haven't seen make it not unfair".

Michael

Ok, I didn't run incomes low enough to determine the maximum differences in the caps and they appear to be much wider than at the higher incomes. At the lower incomes, the cap difference can be as much as 5.5% between a single person and a family of four. I suspect the percentage difference will be less than that between a family of four and a childless couple.

However, even at lower incomes everybody will be getting subsidies. It is just that the subsidy for a single person will not be as high as a childless couple which will not be as high as a family of four.

Then carrying that a little further, all of them are screwing anyone that is making above 400%FPL who don't get any subsidies.

How can anyone expect a family of four making $30,000 ($8,000 above the poverty line but only about $1,000 above free medicaid) to pay $6,000 per year for health insurance or even a childless couple ($15,000 above the poverty line and about $11,000 above free medicaid) to pay that much? A family of 4 making that salary may end up paying $1,000 and a childless couple may end paying $2,000 or possibly even $3,000 but both will be getting very large subsidies.

I guess this is an issue that your piece of pie (the subsidy) isn't large enough.

dakota44

You made it about class war with your statements about "breeders" who are going to receive subsidies at the expense of those with no children. I consider complaints of that nature to be a form of class warfare. Childless in one class, families in another.

Significantly poor individuals, children or not, will be under Medicaid, "All individuals and families with incomes at or below 133% of the federal poverty level will be eligible for Medicaid. Others with higher incomes may also be eligible, depending on rules that vary by state."

A family of 4, policy holder age 50, making $80,000 combined, is hardly poor and receives a subsidy of $5,512. If they have been paying totally out of pocket for insurance coverage, they get a big break in that cost. A single person with that income, definitely far from poor, gets no subsidy. If either of those two decry the subsidies for a family of four with a $40,000 income and therefore much higher subsidies, it smacks of class warfare. If the single person whines about the subsidy for the $80,000 income family raising their children, it's equally a form of class warfare.

I repeat, when childless people bitch about tax benefits etc. for families, they forget where the backbone of the country comes from. I consider those raising children to be contributing to the country.

No matter how you try to dodge your own previous outlandish statements against families that supply the backbone of the country, you invoked class. There is already, and has been for years, a decline in the number of children as a percentage of population. and that has potentially unfortunate consequences for the country.

In 1950 there were 47.3 million children age 17 and under in the U.S. The total population was 152,271,000. Children in that age category made up almost 31% of the total population. In 1980 there were 63.7 million in a population of 227.2 million. Down to 28%. In 2010? 75.2 million in a population of 308 million for a total 24.4% Part of this is certainly due to the increased life expectancy that has grown the population of elderly to it's highest levels. Only within the last ten years have we managed to have a birth rate slightly higher than needed to avoid population decline. And if you factor out Latinos, you don't want to know how low it is. That should scare the shit out of the anti Latino white bread Americans. It's amazing they haven't started a breeding campaign to counteract the Latino effect.

Strikingly, in 1995 there were 32.6 million families with children under the age of 18 and 35.8 million without. In 2010? 32.2% with children under 18 and 45.7% without. The number of families with under 18 children declined amid a huge increase in families without.

Average number of persons under the age of 18 per family in 1970, 1.32 and in 2010, down to .91

The number of families with children has dropped from 75.5% in 1995 to 71.8% now.

The bottom line is that as a nation, the U.S. needs families. Japan is facing a population crisis because of a decline in birth rate and families. There are serious economic consequences to failing to maintain a birthrate adequate to sustain your population.

Time to stop whining about tax and benefit breaks for families.