2013: What ObamaCare will do for you

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When Barack Obama won re-election on November 6, 2012, the Affordable Health Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, became firmly entrenched in law.  The Republicans are still yapping about repeal, but that becomes more and more unlikely as time passes and even the most staunch opponents begin to enjoy the benefits of this legislation.  So just what are those benefits?  Well Peter Weber of The Week did his research and laid them out for us:

ObamaCare supporters react to the Supreme Court decision to uphold President Obama’s health care law on June 28. Mark Wilson/Getty Image

When House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the 2012 election that “ObamaCare is the law of the land,” he was more stating the facts than waving a white flag. Republicans haven’t entirely given up on neutering, or at least undermining, President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, but the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has survived several legislative attempts at repeal, a harrowing Supreme Court challenge, and now a presidential election that promised critics their last best chance of killing ObamaCare before it takes full effect in 2014. Still, a lot of the nuts and bolts of the law are still loose (or still in their packaging), making 2013 a very big year for the health care overhaul. Here’s a chronological rundown of what benefits and rules kick in over the next year, what has yet to be finalized, and what the GOP is doing to keep up the fight:

What has already taken effect
As Obama noted repeatedly in the presidential campaign, ObamaCare already allows parents to keep their children on their health insurance plans until age 26, makes it so children cannot be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions, offers some preventative services at no out-of-pocket cost, and prohibits insurers from setting lifetime limits on benefits. On Nov. 20, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a whole ream of (largely technical) rules guiding how ObamaCare will be implemented.

December 14, 2012
This is the HHS deadline for states to decide whether they will set up their own health insurance exchanges, partner with the federal government, or let the feds set one up for them. “Basically, these will be health insurance stores,” says Peter Grier at The Christian Science Monitor, “markets intended to provide a more organized and competitive way for people to buy a product that’s often complicated and confusing.” Eligible shoppers will include workers whose employers don’t provide affordable health care, the self-employed, and early (pre-Medicare-age) retirees.

As of Nov. 29, 18 states have said they will set up their own exchanges, six have signed on for state-federal partnerships, 17 said they will leave the work to the federal government, and 10 are still undecided. Massachusetts and Utah already have exchanges, although Utah’s is “relatively barebones” and only serves employers, not individuals, says Sarah Kliff at The Washington Post.

This is one of the major ways Republicans hope to hobble ObamaCare. Setting up the exchanges will be a huge undertaking for the states, and the federal government will have an even harder time setting up 17 to 30 different systems for opt-out states. If the Obama team can’t create those exchanges, ObamaCare loses its conduit for providing insurance to millions of Americans. It would serve Democrats right, says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. There’s no way HHS can pull off the exchanges in a year, and “when it turns out that ObamaCare’s costs are underestimated and its benefits exaggerated,” why should GOP governors who opposed it be left holding the bag?

January 1, 2013
Regardless of what happens with the “fiscal cliff,” a few ObamaCare-specific taxes will kick in at the New Year. For people earning more than $200,000 a year (for couples, $250,000), the Medicare Part A (hospital coverage) payroll tax will go up less than 1 percent, to 2.35 percent of wages. Medical device makers face a new 2.3 percent tax, although the IRS has not yet defined what counts as a taxable “medical device.”

July 1, 2013
This is the scheduled date for a group of new Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP) nonprofit, member-run health insurance companies to open their doors for business.

October 2013
At this point, the states’ health insurance exchanges are supposed to go live, letting residents browse through the approved options and sign up for plans. As envisioned, shopping for health insurance should be as easy as shopping for plane tickets or rental cars online. Of course, “Buying health insurance is a lot more difficult than purchasing a plane ticket on Expedia,” says The Washington Post‘s Kliff. So this is also the informal deadline for “setting up large-scale customer support operations” at the state and/or federal level.

Late 2013
In the GOP’s other big shot at striking a blow against ObamaCare, the Supreme Court recently opened the door to a second high-court challenge to the law. In this case, the challenge involves the employer mandate — companies with 50 or more employees will have to provide health coverage or pay a $2,000 fine for every worker past No. 30 — and the requirement that all non-church employers provide free contraception. If the lower court makes its ruling by spring 2013, as expected, says Kilff, “that could lay the foundation for a repeat performance in front of the Supreme Court late next year — just before the major parts of the health care law are expected to kick into gear.”

January 1, 2014
The major parts of the law take effect, including the individual mandate and employer mandate, and the ban on insurers excluding people based on pre-existing medical conditions. This is also when Medicaid coverage expands to everyone in participating states who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Under the individual mandate, everyone will be required to have health insurance, with federal subsidies for everyone earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (currently $11,170 for individuals, $23,050 for a family of four).

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling upheld the individual mandate in Obamacare, which means that everyone must buy health insurance. If you do not buy insurance, you will have to pay a fine starting in 2014.

By 2016, a family of four will be fined or “taxed” either:

  1. the market rate of a standard insurance premium, or
  2. the greater of $2,085 or 2.5% of household income. 1

In other words, the government is requiring that you purchase something, even if you do not want to. This sets a dangerous precedent for the future, because the government can use this method to require other actions it deems necessary.

Find out how ObamaCare affects you.

Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Health Affairs, Kaiser Family Foundation (2), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post (2,3,4)

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About Post Author

Hunter Steele

Colonel Steele is a retired military officer with a deep and abiding interest in history and politics. His views are often considered controversial but his thoughts and observations have been echoed in various publications.
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11 years ago

BTW< my original video about health care, while the plan was still hypothetical, is at:

http://s1181.beta.photobucket.com/user/slrman/media/HealthCare.mp4.html?sort=3&o=28

11 years ago

There is no doubt that Universal Health Care was the answer with plans similar to Medicare. You could then allow private insurance companies to sell supplemental plans just as Medicare does today.

Simple, clean and efficient.

Reply to  Bob Keller
11 years ago

Agreed Bob, but I don’t see the congress having the good sense to enact a common sense plan like this anytime soon.

Jason
11 years ago

I still have many questions about how the affordable care act will work for myself and my wife. We make more than the 23,000 and have no kids, but with our expenses in California, we cannot afford for me to be on insurance. With my wife, her work covers her – we pay nothing. To add me, $600 a month that we can’t afford. $700 for rent, $240 for gas , $250 for groccery, $80-100 for electric, $57 for cell phone, $60 for car insurance. It leaves us about $20-70 a month for extras or savings. That is where I get scared about this bill. I don’t want to be fined because we can’t afford health insurance. I know this bill will help a ton of people, I would like to be one so I can finally get help for my seizures, enlarged heart and PTSD. The reasons I have no job and have not worked in 5 years. (No help from the state either….it was fuck you and die from them). It would be nice to experience being healthier again. I just have questions on how it is supposed to happen. I keep wondering if to save my wife the fine and get help, it means I have to get a divorce. She can’t be fined for an ex-husband, and at least then, maybe I’d get help from the state, but I don’t want to divorce my wife. I love her. I just don’t know what else to do if we can’t find a way to afford the insurance.

Dale Fisk
11 years ago

I suspect that had Obama more experience under his belt when this came about he wouldn’t have been so apathetic. He more or less let the congress fight it out without interceding. That was a mistake.

11 years ago

Here in Brazil, we have private healthcare companies, the two largest being Golden Cross, more prevalent in the south, and Unimed, popular here in the north.

I have been on both but now am on SUS (Sistema Unico De Saúde), the free government plan. The major difference I have found between the three is the waiting time for non-emergency appointments is longer for SUS. It’s a shame the USA didn’t look at something besides Romneycare.

It’s ironic that the Republicans are now so opposed to what was Romney’s plan. But no one ever said they were smart or non-hypocritical.

Joe Hagstrom
11 years ago

I never got the “government can require you to purchase something you don’t want” argument. I never wanted my taxes to pay for invasions of occupations of countries that were no threat. But they are.

The exchanges are a backdoor way of getting us to a single payer system which I favor. Sneaky perhaps but what the hell if it gets us there.

Admin
11 years ago

I have family in the UK and friends all over Europe. They just don’t understand what’s wrong with a wealthy country like America not providing health care to its citizens. Hopefully the day will come when we can do that, although I doubt it will be in my lifetime. There are just too many idiots in America.

11 years ago

Every country in the world with a developed economy and a freely-elected government has a health care plan that covers all of its legal residents except one. That is the USA.

Ironically, American taxpayers are already paying for universal health care for two other countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. This means if a terrorist in training breaks his leg, he can receive care at the expense of the American taxpayer. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this picture?

The real problem with “Obamacare” is it’s really “Romneycare” and no other plan was seriously considered. That seems unbelievably short-sighted when one considers all the successful plans in countries like Holland, Japan, Brazil, Canada, and all of Europe.

anonymous
11 years ago

I just hope this is just the first step in the direction of universal health care like they have in Europe.

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