Stated another way, that’s $34,200 per year.
UPDATE: I was at a meeting in Manchester and ran into a old friend of the ‘Grok and without prompting, he brought up that his Obamacare plan, bought on the exchange, is mirroring my aquaintance’s below: it has just from about $1,000/month for his family to over $2,000 / month. He makes too much as an independent engineer to receive any kind of tax subsidy – he has to float his own boat. He’s now wondering if he has to go bare.
Commenter Jeemo has called me a liar and that I’m making this up – sorry Jeemo, but life is sucking badly when Government actions have all but destroyed the individual healthcare marketplace and made life miserable for million whose only purpose, in the Saul Alinsky word of wealth transfer from Haves to Have-Nots, is to fund others. For the recipients of the tax subsidies, life is now better. For the rest of us that were happy with our plans, life sucks. And Jeemo makes fun of my friends.
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I’ve known him for years and have had him come over to house as a contractor on a number of cases; he was here a couple of days ago. Usually I leave contractors alone to let them do their work and only wander in just because I like to admire peoples’ skills to do work that I can’t do (being a software engineer, I can build castles in my mind but you never want to put a saw, hammer, and a screwdriver into my hands at the same time). However, he smiled as I greeted him coming out of his truck and he exclaimed “great, a fellow conservative to talk with!” as he deals with a lot of public housing projects owned by “public service organizations” that trend rather liberal. One of the topics that came up, as he is self-employed”, was the cost his Obamacare plan; his frustration was BEYOND frustration.
To quickly summarize, he started out paying just a smidge more than $1,000 / month for he and his wife. He said he was actually happy as he was saving about $140 / month to start with. And yes, “start with” is the operative phrase – his happiness quickly faded away as the cost increases started in soon after. The “affordable” part never really applied afterwards. In fact, unless you are a person getting the “free ride” (the Have-Not) and premiums being paid by the rest of us (the ostensible “Haves”), it no longer is “affordable”.
His frustration came out when he said with great sadness and no small amount of bitterness: “how many people am I supposed to be carrying on my back”? Why?
His monthly premium is now going to be $2,850. Stated another way, that’s $34,200 per year. Add in the $3,000/year deduction for him and the same for his wife, that’s a total of $40,200 BEFORE the insurance starts picking up the cost. WHO in their right mind is going to pay this??? Let me remind you that the median income is around $32,000 / year. This acquaintance works 60 or more hours a week – each day the first $100 or more he earns is going to pay for Obamacare.
It certainly isn’t for him – this cost is too exorbitant just for his needs. No, this is a perfect example of the actual purpose of Obamacare – a MASSIVE wealth transfer from one class to another. This has cushioned the poor but is creating a new “health insecurity” class (God, I hate using language of the Cultural Marxists!) – those that used to be self-sufficient and now, because of the artificially contrived costs mandated by Government, are having to either choose to go without or…
…beseech Government to save them. THIS was the real purpose of Obamacare – cause a yet another class to be dependent on Government with a single payer system. Some Democrats alluded to it and those opposed to it said it many times over that Obamacare would crash and burn leading to the only conclusion for Big Government supporters that ONLY Government Single Payer could save us all (they hate people making their own separate decisions in the Free Market because it is a loss of control for THEM). To turn the land of rugged individualism to a sniveling crowd of class fighting “Gimmee” subjects. Was this REALLY the end game of our Revolution with Britain for independence? To trade in independence for dependence?
My acquaintance is beside himself and he is mad at Government, at the Progressive Totalitarians, that have put him into this situation. He was perfectly happy with his pre-Obamacare policy. It was one he could afford, it was one that met his needs, and he liked the medical community that it included. The Democrats said “you’re wrong and we know what you need better than you do.”
And this is why the Democrats have become a bi-coastal rump political Party. It is rather sad that the Republican Party are too cowardly to live out their stated Principles and do what they promised to do (return us to more of a Free Market situation) for years.
This is how BOTH the Democrats and Republicans get more Trump (and neither he or I were Trump supporters from the get go but BOTH of us agree that that of all of the politicians in the recent past, at least Trump is trying to keep his campaign promises).
