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Yay! We Get a Six-Week Extension on Paying Our Obamacare Fines!

Thursday, October 24, 2013 16:55

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(Before It's News)

According to some estimates, the Obamacare website cost up to $600 million to create, and even though it seems like that figure should buy a small island in addition to a functioning website, the one the American people ended up with at Healthcare.gov doesn’t even remotely work.

Have no fear, America; the government has graciously announced we will get a six-week extension on paying our Obamacare penalties if we do not sign up for health insurance under the “Affordable” Care Act or find some other insurance that meets criteria within the time period stipulated.

The Department of Health and Human Services is giving us six more weeks after March 31st to buy our insurance through the government and the complete box of fail that is Healthcare.gov.

So what happens if you don’t, and you don’t meet “minimum essential coverage” in some other way under the law? Well, you will be forced to pay the government a penalty:

…for now, this fiasco will cost each and every American out of pocket cash money. Relatively low, the amount of the fine for 2014 is 1% of your annual income or $95 per person, whichever is higher. This may not seem like much, but if you earn a $20,000 salary, a $200 bill is in many cases not “affordable”. The fine for uninsured children is $47.50 per child with a family “cap” of $285 (the government half dozen deal?).

After 2014, things get increasingly worse.

In just two years, 2016, the fine is estimated to reach $695 per person or 2.5% of your annual income, yikes! Remember paying the fine is not health insurance. (source)

The government claims the extension is due to people being confused over the law and not the monumental failure of the new federal healthcare exchange website where people can barely even log in and the functionality is so screwed up, even some basic calculators on the site don’t work. The administration still has not released actual enrollment figures because, reportedly, they are in the single digits (not because people haven’t tried to sign up, they simply are unable to because our government spent hundreds of millions of dollars and can’t even build a working website).

And remember, paying the fines will be cheaper for both businesses and most individuals than buying the actual insurance. So businesses won’t be “forced” to insure employees or any wishful thinking positive spin like that — they will only be forced to pay a brand spanking new fine to the government to continue not to insure their employees. Same for everyone else. Paying the fine will be cheaper than buying the insurance.

That’s why stories abound of companies dropping or downgrading their employee insurance in favor of paying the government fines instead.

Don’t like allopathic medicine? Don’t take pharmaceuticals? Favor homeopathic and alternative cures to Big Pharma? Better get used to paying a yearly fine to the government, too. After all, it shouldn’t be up to the people how they want to handle their own treatments, and no one knows how to handle your health decisions better than a government that can’t even build a website.