Democrat Care's Perverse Incentives...Or Are They Disincentives? - Granite Grok

Democrat Care’s Perverse Incentives…Or Are They Disincentives?

The (Un)Affordable (Diminished)Care Act(like it does any of the things promised) includes mountains of evil not the least of which is this which should put a stake in the heart of any Democrat narrative about supporting American Families.

If they (a 60 year old couple with no kids) have identical earnings totaling $65,000, which will usually net down to $50,000 or below after all income and payroll taxes, their Obamacare exchange Silver Plan premium next year with the same earnings will be $16,382, or about one-third of what used to be their take-home pay. (And they call it the “Affordable Care Act”?)

What can this couple do? Well, they could decide to earn a few thousand dollars less, which will negate the five-figure premium hit. Encouraging ordinarily willing workers to put in less effort isn’t good in any economy, but especially not this one. But if either spouse’s earnings are unpredictable or hard to precisely track, they could still “mess up” and get socked with a premium they can’t afford.

The “easiest” solution would be to avoid the “wedding tax” entirely by getting divorced while still living together.

Married No Kids Age 60 Wedding Tax

Instead of facing an exorbitant premium increase once their combined earnings hits $62,041 if they were to stay married, each cohabiting adult can earn up to $45,960 before Obamacare’s “tax credit”-free premiums kick in. Their annual after-tax savings at age 60 if they shack up and keep their individual earnings between $31,021 and $45,960 will range from $7,650 to over $11,000. The annual savings will slightly increase every year until Medicare kicks in at age 65. That kind of money can buy a lot of gifts for the grandkids.

The tables and formulas are all screwed up but the bottom line is that ObamCare punishes people who try to earn more, and encourages them to never marry or to simply divorce to avoid crippling tax bills.  And while that all may sound like what we all think when we are told we have “a constitutional right to government managed health care” consider his from the same article by Tom Blumer at PJ Media.

The law in many if not most states says that you can’t cohabit indefinitely and still claim not to be married.

Because the government will be starved for money, the Internal Revenue Service will task itself with finding cohabiting couples and divorced couples still living together who are “illegally” claiming that they are not married for health care subsidy purposes.

Those caught and punished by the IRS carrying out its new role as the de facto “marriage police” could get hit with multi-year bills for undeserved “tax credits” running into tens of thousands of dollars.

16,500 new IRS agents won’t be anywhere near the number needed to enforce the Obamacare regime.

ObamaCare is a tax.  So DemocratCare is taxing the crap out of average Middle class Americans and disincentivizing them from earning more or improving their own lives.

And maybe one of those Democrats who called me a racist or some other name becasue I objected to this offal bill can explain this;  if this isn’t Democrats “putting the government in your bedroom,” what is?

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