In your lifetime would you have ever thought that America’s middle income children would be forced into low income healthcare systems?
A provision hidden in the shadows of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) bears serious ramifications for Middle America’s families. It will force their children to be enrolled in sub-standard healthcare and will also tighten the noose of socialist government around their necks.
These children may eventually become more acceptable to a nanny state due to their being taken care within the system. Worse, and more insidious, the parents of these children will find themselves open to financial and family scrutiny by state and federal officials.
This will happen because parents who meet ACA subsidy guidelines, based on their modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), will be required to enroll their children in government aid programs.
In other words, households that meet national median income standards will more than likely not have their children insured on their “Family Obamacare” plan. Those 18 and younger will be placed onto Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Plans (CHIP).
Medicaid provides coverage for some low-income people, families and children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities. CHIP provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
This provision has not been mentioned in any of “If you like your policy” or “You can keep your Doctor” public conversations our President has given. It deals with income levels that prevent children under 18 from being placed on their parent’s policies.
I have personally confirmed this with Nykita Scott, a University of Georgia Navigator, and also with a National Health Insurance Marketplace Specialist.
Just what is considered earning too much money versus low income? What is the income level that entitles an Obamacare enrollee to receive a subsidy but dumps their children into Medicaid or CHIP?
According to the U.S. Census the median household income in the U.S. is $50,502. This means that one half of income earners fall below and one half is above the $50,502 line. To validate my findings I did a “What If’ search on the Health Care website (https://www.healthcare.gov/) for a family of four, a father 39, a mother 37, two children ages 11 and 9. According to the Website’s calculations the cutoff for the children’s eligibility on a family plan was $60,000.
Is it safe to say a family of four with a gross household income of $75,000 will be able to have their children on the plan? Not really.
I did a few President Bush fuzzy math calculations and here is the bottom line. Obamacare financial eligibility is based on (MAGI) modified adjusted gross income. A family of four, earning $75,000 gross, is allowed combined personal deductions of $24,200. Add a $5,000 traditional IRA deduction, and the MAGI for this family is reduced to $53,800.
Therefore, a family with a gross income of $80,000, with the same deductions, would also fall below the MAGI that allow their children to be insured on their plan.
Get Covered America, another partner in the ACA chain, claims, “90 percent could get financial help.”
Considering only 33 percent of America’s households have incomes above $75,000, this unspoken provision, hidden in the eligibility calculations, could have devastating effects on our children, grandchildren, and the taxpayers who will have to support Obamacare funding in the future.
True, at the present time many of those earners I am writing about are covered through their workplace, another provision President Obama used his executive privilege to move forward. However, when this portion of the Affordable Care Act kicks in, we will probably see millions more families placed on Obamacare as their employers are forced to drop plans due to cost.
In addition to increasing governmental controls on the families, the quality of healthcare will diminish greatly due to overloads as doctors refuse new patients or leave Medicaid completely.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that only 69 percent of doctors nationally would accept new Medicaid patients. The report claims, with one-third of doctors reporting that they will not take new Medicaid patients, access to doctors is a growing problem ahead of the full implementation of Obamacare.
When the healthcare reform law is fully in effect by 2014, millions of people will be added to the healthcare program under the Medicaid expansion.
Practices that do continue to accept Medicaid and CHIP will be more poorly staffed and overworked than in previous years. Isn’t it paradoxical that a system designed to help lower income Americans will become so inundated with new patients that those with the most need will find it harder to get care?
How may this problem be avoided? Don’t claim exemptions that will bring your family below the financial cutoff. Of course you will pay more tax, but your children could get better healthcare.
A better solution might be to contact your legislators and if need be use excerpts from this writing or the whole letter and demand Obamacare be repealed.
Call your doctors, with special emphasis on pediatricians, and make them aware of this provision. Contact friends and family in other states and ask them to do the same. Your children and grandchildren are depending on you.
Joel Kinsman, MBA, CFC, CPC
Peachtree City, Ga.
