Thursday, January 31, 2013

Obama administration takes steps to implement individual mandate -

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/280117-obama-administration-implements-health-laws-individual-mandate


The Obama administration took new steps Wednesday toward implementing the individual mandate in its signature healthcare law, downplaying the scope of the unpopular provision by stressing rules that allow exemptions from the requirement to purchase insurance. The Internal Revenue Service and the Health and Human Services Department emphasized exceptions to the mandate, which were detailed in new regulations that also laid out the process by which the IRS will calculate penalties for going uninsured. 
The mandate requires most taxpayers to either buy insurance or pay a fine to the IRS. It's one of the most politically unpopular provisions of the healthcare law, and was at the core of last year's historic Supreme Court case over the healthcare law. HHS referred to the politically charged provision as a system of "shared responsibility" payments. 
we want stuff that is true though referred to as the poor by republicans it is inclusive of all of us rich and poor.
rich want things the republicans give them, tax cuts, loopholes and deregulation, does that make then no better then those they condemn as takers? in order to take you have to have the means to do so, they guard theirs and take ours, voter rights, jobs, pay, elections while we take nothing from them.
the US has always taken care of it's people until it became right wing unfashionable, they rather give to charities where they can get tax credits but not to us because that cannot be claimed April 15th.
In 2014, people who choose not to buy insurance and don't quality for an exemption from the mandate will have to pay a fine of $95. The penalty increases to $695 by 2016, and then rises annually based on a pre-determined formula.
Although conservatives have railed against the mandate since Obama adopted it in 2009, some policy experts are concerned that it's too weak to work — that it won't be an effective incentive for young, healthy people to buy insurance.
Still, HHS and the IRS chose to focus on exceptions as they implemented the mandate Wednesday.
The Affordable Care Act includes exceptions for people with religious objections to traditional healthcare services, as well as a slew of income-related carve-outs.
"A principle in implementing the individual shared responsibility provision is that the shared responsibility payment should not apply to any taxpayer for whom coverage is unaffordable, who has other good cause for going without coverage, or who goes without coverage for only a short time," HHS said.
they say there is no free lunch, yet we choose to eat those who opposeneed to re-read the first 7 words of this paragraph