“Death Spiral”: Obamacare Premiums May Soar As Much As 91% Next Year

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

Residents of Maryland and Virginia face double-digit percentage increases in premiums for individual Obamacare plans in 2019, according to rate requests made by insurers.

The largest hikes are being sought by CareFirst, which is seeking a 64% increase in Virginia, and a whopping 91% increase in Maryland for its PPO. Other insurers are following suit in the two states, with Kaiser requesting hikes of 32% and 37% respectively, followed by CareFirst’s HMO offering.

In Maryland, CareFirst wants to raise rates by 91 percent on a plan covering 15,000 people, Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. said. If approved, premiums for a 40-year-old could reach $1,334 a month. –Bloomberg

That’s over $16,000 per year for an individual plan in a state with an average personal income of $59,524.

“We have folks in Maryland that are struggling, that are trying to do the right thing, and they’re paying more for their health insurance than they are for their mortgage,” Redmer said on a call with reporters.

Maryland is seeking permission from the federal government to create a reinsurance program that would use $975 million in state and federal funds over five years to lower rates. That would help only temporarily, Redmer said. –Bloomberg

“I believe we’ve been in a death spiral for a year or two,” he said, adding that a permanent solution requires Congress to fix the Affordable Care Act.

Virginia and Maryland are the first two states in which 2019 rate requests – which are subject to regulatory approval and may change – have been made public, however increases are anticipated across the country as insurers adjust to the post-ACA battle. Final premium increases will need to be approved ahead of the November 1 open-enrollment period.

The hikes are being blamed in part by the expectation that the elimination of the Obamacare stipulation forcing all Americans to have health coverage would leave insurers with a smaller pool of sicker clients.

Many health plans have stopped selling health coverage through the exchanges created four years ago under Obamacare. The Republican-led attempt to overturn the health law last year caused premiums to surge, as insurers expected that undoing the law’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance would leave them with a smaller and sicker pool of clients. –Bloomberg

While the repeal of ACA ultimately failed, the Trump administration overturned the provision penalizing uninsured Americans – something last week Trump’s former top health official, Tom Price, warned would raise the cost of health insurance for some Americans.

“There are many, and I’m one of them, who believes that that actually will harm the pool in the exchange market, because you’ll likely have individuals who are younger and healthier not participating in that market, and consequently that drives up the cost for other folks within that market,” Price said at the World Health Care Conference in Washington.

Price’s comments are in line with predictions from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which in November projected 13 million fewer Americans would have health insurance by 2027 as a result of the elimination of the individual mandate. The CBO also said average premiums in the exchanges would increase by about 10 percent in most years over the next decade, compared with a scenario in which the mandate had been left in place. –Washington Post

“Those effects would occur mainly because healthier people would be less likely to obtain insurance and because, especially in the nongroup market, the resulting increases in premiums would cause more people to not purchase insurance,” the CBO said at the time.

“The individual mandate is one of those things that is actually driving up the cost for the American people in terms of coverage,” said Price on last summer on ABC’s This Week. “So what we’re trying to do is make it so that Obamacare is no longer harming the patients of this land — no longer driving up costs, no longer making it so that they’ve got coverage but no care.”

In Virginia, the health insurance market is quite sick – with Charlottesville and neighboring counties suffering under some of the most expensive healthcare costs in the nation for people who don’t receive government subsidies.

A 40-year-old trying to afford a mid-level plan will pay around $1,048 a month.

“Carol Wise, a former nurse and social worker in Charlottesville who consults for nonprofits, paid about $640 a month last year for an individual plan from Anthem,” repoorts Bloomberg. “When Anthem pulled out of her area, the only plan available, insurer Optima Health Plan, had a premium of $1,800 a month.”

“I was blown away,” said Wise, 62.

Wise instead joined a health-care sharing ministry for $280 a month, which offers far fewer protections than traditional coverage.

Breakdown of each insurer’s proposed changes via Bloomberg: 

• Group Hospitalization and Medical Services Inc., which operates a CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, wants to raise premiums by 64 percent, on average, compared with 2018 premium levels, according to documents filed with Virginia regulators on May 4. The change would affect more than 4,000 customers.


• The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan is seeking an average rate increase of 32 percent on about 79,000 members in Virginia, while Cigna asked regulators to approve a 15 percent increase, projected to affect 103,000 members.


• Optima, which some Virginians have criticized for highest-in-the-nation premiums in some areas, said that on average its rates would decrease by 2 percent, and they would decline as much as 27 percent for some customers.


• In Maryland, CareFirst’s larger HMO plan covering 123,000 people requested a 19 percent increase. Kaiser is seeking a 37 percent hike. Both would put the new rates for a 45-year-old above $500 a month, Maryland officials said.


• Anthem Inc., which pulled out of many markets this year, is requesting a 6 percent increase for its HealthKeepers-branded plans in areas of Virginia where it remains.

“We’re still sky-high, and we still have a lot of concerns about the rates,” said Charlottesville resident Ian Dixon, who has helped organize Virginians to apply pressure on legislators and Optima for lower premiums. Even with a drop around 30%, he said, Optima’s 2019 rates come in at around double what residents were paying in 2017, when Anthem and other insurers were still offering plans.

Government Subsidized Medicine Bankrupt Hospitals

Hospitals are now government subsidized monopolies. They have little to do with improving the health of patients but have everything to do with dispensing pharmaceutical industry drugs and treatments. The net result is that small and rural hospitals must merge into mega facilities in order to achieve economy of scale or close altogether because fewer Americans can afford health insurance coverage. Federal and State subsidizes are mounting in a futile attempt to pay for the deficits that arise in providing medical costs for an aging population. This formula has only one outcome, BANKRUPTCY.

At the core of the failed medical culture is the reliance on chemical compounds plagued by dire side effect prescriptions and marketed as miracle drugs. Often the only marvel is that a patient does not die quicker. In order to achieve a healthy lifestyle, the food diet and digested requires a fundamental revamping of what is eaten, how it is processed and most important, what to avoid.

This approach conflicts with the incessant drive to create even bigger bureaucracies and more complex regulations and requirements for access to medical services.

Basing this system on an insurance model guarantees insolvency of a private sector delivery system. Government is all too eager to assume (using their flawed general welfare claim) that schemes like Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are necessary to pay for and provide medical coverage. The fact that this argument simply does not work should be self-evident.

Hospitals project that their form of treatments are proven. The problem is that their notion of tested practices usually ends up in a body bag. Government funding for Ayurvedic, Homeopath, Massage therapist, Hypnotherapist, Naturopath and Osteopath physicians/practitioner are usually outside the protective cocoon of the administrative boards and foundations connected with medical citadels.

Therapy using alternative methods demand that a sick person or one seeking treatment for some illness mostly pay out of pocket. Around 40 percent of Americans lacked dental insurance at the end of 2012, according to the National Association of Dental Plans. That’s compared to 12.9 percent without health insurance, according to the latest figures from Gallup – May 20, 2015.

If the consumer was actually paying with their own funds for the services and fees administered, the marketplace of costs would be much more responsive to a real or perceived benefit. Hospitals for outpatient care add substantial expense and ridiculous administrative overhead for procedures that have been drive up by the excessive rate amounts approved by government programs.

Medical treatment demands a negotiated agreement between the patient and those who practice the art/science of healing. In this age of the breakdown in rational medical delivery, the unsustainable fiasco of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has destroyed the last refuge of even the appearance of cost-effective medicine.

Only a repudiation of the bloated and unaccountable government oversight administration has even a slight chance to establishing a market based relationship between patient invoicing and effective and reduced costs for services.

Hospitals could rent out physical space, labs, examination rooms and treatment facilities to independent physicians or practitioners who would apply their expertise in consultation with the patient. Charges for such services would be the responsibility of those suffering from an illness. In this manner a balance in the relationship that reflects an agreed to value would have the effect to keep invoicing realistic.

Government subsidies only drive up costs. Mega hospitals by consolidating and closing down their rivals add layers of bureaucratic inefficiency and unaccountability, while diminishing choice for treatment with every closing or liquidation.

If patients added up the cumulative billing for hospital, doctor and prescription drugs, and paid such bills with their own funds; they surely would become educated consumers. Saving from opting out of medical insurance would accumulate over the years and grow for the time when such funds might be needed to satisfy whatever treatment option is sought.

The myth that society has a responsibility to make available whatever treatment procedure to cure, prolong or experiment using government funds has guaranteed that national bankruptcy is the inevitable prognosis. Fostering the conditions that close hospital competition is simply developing the “too big to fail” theory applied to medical treatment.

And where is the doctor outrage in this formula? Lawsuit fights “existential threat” to medical staff independence illustrates the trend to squeeze out the last blood dollar from the artificial and government sponsored hospital model.

“The suits stems from actions taken Jan. 26, 2016, when the Tulare Regional Medical Center (TRMC) board of directors voted to terminate the hospital’s medical staff organization and effectively remove the hospital’s elected medical staff officers, install a slate of appointed officers, and approve new medical staff bylaws and rules drafted without staff input.

Except for the newly appointed officers, the rest of the staff was then terminated, stripped of their rights as active members and then granted “provisional” status as part of the new medical staff which they had not applied or consented to membership with, according to a post-trial brief filed by the TRMC Medical Staff.

The replacement bylaws also contained a provision, since amended, that physicians could achieve and maintain “active” status by proving their economic value to the hospital, according to the brief—which described that provision as “basically, an illegal kickback scheme.”

“If you could imagine hospital medical staff bylaws written by hospital lawyers, this is what they would look like,” Do said. “Doctors shouldn’t be making decisions on patient care based on hospital profitability.”

The net result is to force out the regional, rural or independent facilities and structure the supra corporate hospital into a partnership with government, where other clinics need not apply. This Is not exactly a M*A*S*H, medical emergency unit, but more closely resembles a sanatorium of demented technocrats. Save health services by converting them into alternative medicine facilities. Cancel your health insurance and start saving to pay for a future illness. Get government out of the health care business and return sanity so the sick can decide just what treatment they want.

The post Government Subsidized Medicine Bankrupt Hospitals appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

44 Numbers From 2017 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

2017 went by way too quickly. Donald Trump’s first year in the White House shook up the entire planet, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next. Personally, as 2017 began I was still having a hard time actually believing that Trump was going to be our president. Once he was finally inaugurated on January 20th I was able to relax a little bit, but at that point I had no idea that I would soon be running for Congress here in Idaho as a pro-Trump candidate. As 2018 begins, I think that it would be good to look back and remember some of the most important things that happened over the past 12 months. The following are 44 numbers from 2017 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 During Donald Trump’s first year, ISIS lost 98 percent of the territory that it gained while Barack Obama was in the White House.

#2 The price of Bitcoin rose more than 1,300% during 2017.

#3 According to the Washington Post, one out of every ten young adults in the United States has been homeless at some point over the past year.

#4 The United States has lost more than 70,000 manufacturing facilities since China joined the WTO in 2001.

#5 On Donald Trump’s first full day in office he was 70 years, 7 months and 7 days old, and it happened in year 5777 on the Hebrew calendar.

#6 The all-time record for the number of retail store closings in the U.S. was absolutely shattered in 2017. According to the latest figures, a total of 6,985 store locations were shut down last year, and we are expected to break the record again in 2018.

#7 Incredibly, the number of retail store closings in 2017 was up 229 percent compared with 2016.

#8 When Ronald Reagan entered the White House, the federal government was about one trillion dollars in debt.  Now we are 20 trillion dollars in debt with no end in sight.

#9 Prominent names in the financial world such as John McAfee and James Altucher are predicting that the price of Bitcoin will eventually reach one million dollars.

#10 According to the most recent numbers that we have, 41 million Americans are currently living in poverty.

#11 A recent CNN poll found that only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

#12 Ever since the beginning of April, Congress has had an average approval rating of less than 20 percent.

#13 The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 5,000 points in 2017, and that absolutely shattered the previous record of 3,472 points in 2013.

#14 At one point in 2017, the total market cap for all cryptocurrencies combined (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, etc.) surpassed the half a trillion dollar mark.

#15 Wildfires burned an astounding 9,791,062 acres over the past year.

#16 It is being reported that less than 50 percent of all third, fourth and fifth grade students in the state of California meet minimum standards for literacy.

#17 At one very poorly performing elementary school in California, 96 percent of the students are not proficient in either English or math.

#18 Back in 1960, an average of $146 was spent on healthcare per person for the entire year, but today that number has skyrocketed to $9,990.

#19 Thanks to Obamacare, an appendectomy is ten times more expensive in the United States than it is in Mexico.

#20 Thanks to Obamacare, a family of four in Virginia is now facing the prospect of paying $3,000 a month for health insurance.

#21 It is being projected that the average rate increase for Obamacare plans will be 37 percent in 2018.

#22 In 2017, we found out that 264 cases of sexual harassment involving members of Congress have been settled for a grand total of $17,250,854 since the start of 1997.

#23 Economic growth is starting to pick up under President Trump, but the U.S. economy only grew at an average rate of just 1.33 percent over the 10 years prior to 2017.

#24 It is being reported that homelessness has become so pervasive in ultra-liberal Seattle that “400 unauthorized tent camps” have popped up around the city.

#25 One survey that was conducted in 2017 discovered that 78 percent of all full-time workers in the United States live paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

#26 According to the Federal Reserve, the average U.S. household is now $137,063 in debt, and that figure is more than double the median household income.

#27 A staggering 59.8 percent of younger Millennials (18 to 25) are now living with relatives, and overall an all-time record 38.4 percent of all Millennials are currently living with family.

#28 Boston University professor Larry Kotlikoff says that the federal government is facing a fiscal gap of 210 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.

#29 According the National Center For Health Statistics, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. adults are now officially obese. That is an all-time record.

#30 Our obesity epidemic is now costing us 190 billion dollars a year.

#31 Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, and Warren Buffett now have more money than the poorest 50 percent of the U.S. population combined.

#32 At this point, 20 percent of all U.S. households have “either zero or negative wealth”.

#33 U.S. stocks have have increased in value by more than 5 trillion dollars since Donald Trump was elected.

#34 For the season, NFL television ratings were down about 9 percent, and many believe that the anthem protests were the primary cause for the ratings decline.

#35 One very disturbing survey found that less than one out of every four Republican members of Congress support building Trump’s border wall. This is just one reason why we need to vote out the RINOs and replace them with pro-Trump candidates that will support President Trump’s agenda.

#36 Another survey discovered that 50 percent of all Americans favor a pre-emptive strike on North Korea even though many of them cannot even find North Korea on a map of the world.

#37 Last year criminals were able to hack into Equifax and make off with the credit information of 143 million Americans.

#38 Venezuela, the 11th largest oil producing country in the entire world, decided to stop using the petrodollar in 2017. This was one of the biggest news stories of the entire year, and yet the mainstream media in the U.S. didn’t want to talk about it.

#39 It has been reported that only 25 percent of all Americans have more than $10,000 in savings right now.

#40 A study conducted by the Federal Reserve found that 44 percent of all U.S. adults do not even have enough money “to cover an unexpected $400 expense”.

#41 In the early 1970s, 70 percent of all men in the United States from the age of 20 to the age of 39 were married, but today that number has fallen to just 35 percent. Instead of getting married and starting families, a lot of our young men are still living at home with their parents. Today, 35 percent of all young men from the age of 21 to the age of 30 “are living at home with their parents or a close relative”.

#42 In 2017, the federal government spent more than 4 trillion dollars for the first time ever.

#43 Our government continues to waste money in some of the most insane ways imaginable. For example, in 2017 we learned that the U.S. military actually spends 42 million dollars a year on Viagra.

#44 One survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans now “prefer socialism to capitalism”, and so we have much work to do if we intend to have any chance of turning this country around.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream. 

If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.

Five Things Professors Actually Said In 2017

Via Campus Reform,

Most Americans expect college professors to be beacons of knowledge and wisdom, or at least to exercise more maturity than their teenage students.

Every year, however, Campus Reform comes across professors who unashamedly make outrageous, preposterous, and downright absurd remarks in their classrooms and on social media, denigrating conservatives and their viewpoints.

In 2017, President Trump’s first year in the Oval Office brought academic rage to new heights as professors frequently blasted the Commander-in-Chief and berated his voters, traditional conservatives, and anyone who does not embrace progressivism.

Here are five things that professors actually said in 2017:

1) Prof suggests Texans deserve hurricane for supporting Trump

A University of Tampa professor was so upset about the outcome of the 2016 presidential election that he publicly suggested that Texans deserved Hurricane Harvey because the state voted Republican last year.

“I don’t believe in instant Karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas,” Professor Ken Storey tweeted in August. “Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesn’t care about them.”

Shortly after the controversial remarks, the university announced that it had fired the professor.

2) Prof says House GOP ‘should be lined up and shot’

An Art Institute of Washington professor was so furious about the House GOP’s effort to repeal and replace Obamacare that he said GOP lawmakers “should be lined up and shot” for their actions.

“They should be lined up and shot,” Professor John Griffin wrote on his Facebook page. “That’s not hyperbole; blood is on their hands.”

3) Prof calls whites "inhuman assholes," says "let them die"

In June, Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams made national headlines after appearing to suggest that the first responders should have let the victims of the congressional shooting "fucking die” because they are white.

“It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be ‘white’ will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. #LetThemFuckingDie,” Williams wrote in a Facebook post, including the hashtag as an apparent reference to an op-ed with the same title that he had shared two days earlier.

Following his controversial remarks, Williams was placed on leave but is slated to return to teaching in 2018.

4) Prof says Otto Warmbier "got exactly what he deserved"

A University of Delaware professor claimed that Otto Warmbier, a young American who died after being held in a North Korean prison camp, “got exactly what he deserved.”

Professor Katherine Dettwyler made her remarks on her personal Facebook page and in the comments section of an article published by National Review.

Dettwyler maintained that Warmbier behaved like a “spoiled, naive, arrogant U.S. college student who never had to face the consequences of his actions” when he visited North Korea, and that he had a “typical mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males” she teaches.

5) Drexel prof blames "whiteness" for Texas massacre

George Ciccariello-Maher, an assistant professor at Drexel University who made headlines by calling for “white genocide” last year, was at it again in 2017.

In early November, the academic pinned the blame for the Texas massacre that killed 26 people on what he called “whiteness” and “entitlement.”

“Whiteness is never seen as a cause, in and of itself, of these kinds of massacres, of other forms of violence,” Ciccariello-Maher said in an interview with Democracy Now!, asserting that “whiteness is a structure of privilege and it’s a structure of power, and a structure that, when it feels threatened, you know, lashes out.”

Midterm Elections & A Paradigm Shift (Return) to the Left

After the President was elected and inaugurated, I wrote several articles specifically stating that if he didn’t accomplish significant changes by the Midterm Congressional elections, he would not be reelected. We are seeing this on its way to fruition with the Alabama race to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions. The Democrat Doug Jones has won it, and the Republican-held majority in the Senate now shrinks by one seat.

Not that it really matters. Susan Collins was one of the three Republicans quashing the attempt to remove the provision making Obamacare mandatory. Olympia Snow was the Republican Senator from Maine that allowed Obamacare to come up on the Senate Floor in the first place. Roberts (the “conservative”) the Supreme Court justice enabled Obamacare to be kept as a law.

The parties are merely an illusion of a two-party system. All of them are Statists, elitists, and Marxist-Progressives determined to completely rend the Constitution and enslave all of the citizen-serfs while they assume the positions of “uncrowned” nobility. Will they remove the mandatory clause from Obamacare, or repeal the entire law? No.

In a pig’s eye will any of these imperial statists remove a law that has every American citizen by the throat…a law the lawmakers exempted themselves from, “stamped” with “King” Obama’s approval with the Supreme Court solidifying it.

In reality, the establishment obtained exactly what it wanted, as I reported before the election, and shortly thereafter: A President who is derailed at every effort and made to appear as a “loser.” Such will make Congress Democrat-controlled again and the President a one-termer. This is happening, before our very eyes.

The United States is one step above being a third-world country, almost ready to take the plunge into the pool of totalitarianism. Go ahead: try to leave the country without a passport if you owe any money…more than you make in a year. Go ahead: try and maintain any semblance of privacy when everything you do on the computer, every purchase you make, and every place you travel is monitored, recorded, and saved for…. for what?

Saved for the inevitable day when the country morphs into full-blown tyranny and every citizen is monitored and tracked 24 hours a day by the State. 

No need for a “mark of the beast!” Such would be counterproductive: it would be recognized and fought against. No need for that! No need: Almost everyone carries around their little chittering cell phones – personal tracking devices – all tied into the computer…and the CCTV cameras…and the fusion centers and police departments. Do you want to provide Google/Yahoo/Bing with your password, in case you forget? Can’t give your mobile cell phone number now? We’ll hit you with the term “Thanks, I’ll secure my account later.”

That is the option you have…a “choice” that forces you to indemnify…to make a pledge to do it later, and thanking them for doing it to boot!

CDs and DVDs are on their way out the door, and you’ll subscribe to music, subscribe to the movies the way you subscribe to Word and Windows, not owning the disc anymore. The way you subscribe to phone time. The manner in which you subscribe to e-newspapers and Kindle.

Hooked into everything and owning nothing…and all your habits, purchases, and proclivities continuously monitored: the perfect consumer, with all your paycheck accounted for via direct deposit…and always one paycheck away from disaster and ruin.

The “joke” of an election that changes the identity of the person in office, and nothing more. The Paradigm shift back toward the right was permitted because they knew they couldn’t get away with stealing the election for Hillary Clinton…there would have been a revolution.

The establishment gave conservatives their “champion” for now, and everyone on the conservative side of the house is taking a breather…when only the round ended, not the fight. Yes, it is just a pause as the left sets up for the next presidential election. You can bet it will be a shift back to the left this time…with the same demographics for the supporters as the two Obama elections.

The deliberate collapse of the country is being orchestrated from within. After 8 years of Obama weakening the defenses, we are goading nations into war and still pursuing a policy of imperial expansion. Van Jones: Top down, bottom up, domestically while we back North Korea, China, and Russia economically, diplomatically, and militarily.

Ben Franklin was once asked by a woman what form of government the founding fathers had created. “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it,” was his response. We lost it. We lost that Republic a long time ago, and the Alabama Senate victory for the Democrats is just the beginning. With a disapproval rating of more than 60%, it would stand to reason the President can rely on one tool to pull his ratings up and give him another term. That trump card (no pun intended) is war, and we are just a hair’s breadth away from it. The primary objective is not the welfare of the American people. The primary objective of an incumbent is reelection, at any and all costs…especially when those costs can be placed on us.

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Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne).  Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).  He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.

This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

Will Your Taxes Go Up? Find Out With These 8 Scenarios

With Republicans having inexplicably sacrificed a crucial Senate seat last night by choosing to support a candidate accused of multiple counts of pedophilia, it"s unclear whether tax reform is even a remote possibility at this point.  Certainly, the challenge of forming a consensus among the GOP was difficult enough when they held a 2-seat advantage in the Senate so we can only assume it will be next to impossible now that that lead has been cut in half. 

Of course, Republicans seem to have every intent of passing a tax bill before Doug Jones gets seated in January...but, then again, they"ve missed almost every deadline they"ve set for themselves since Trump moved into the White House nearly a full year ago.

Be that as it may, just in case a bill gets passed at some point before winter break, Bloomberg, along with a little help from Baird Private Wealth Management, has put together a series of 8 tables which help to quantify exactly how you may be impacted by tax reform whether you"re a "millionaire, billionaire, private jet owner" living in Manhattan or an "average Joe" making $40k a year and renting an apartment in Milwaukee.  Here they are:

Scenario 1 - Manhattan Millionaires: These Manhattan residents have a jumbo mortgage (at an assumed 4 percent interest rate) and take a $40,000 deduction on mortgage interest; pay property taxes of $96,250 and state income tax of $135,360; and make annual charitable contributions totaling $100,000.

Unfortunately, contrary to what you might hear from Nancy Pelosi, these folks take a hit under both the House and Senate tax bill primarily due to the loss of the SALT deductions.

Scenario 2 - Malibu Millionaires:  A married couple has a primary residence in Malibu, California, and a second home in Lake Tahoe. The property tax on the Malibu home is $15,860, and $4,896 on their second home; they deduct $40,000 total in mortgage interest for the two homes; and give $50,000 to charity.

Scenario 3 - Small Business Owner:  This married couple with a small manufacturing business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has $300,000 in pass-through business income. Their deductible mortgage interest adds up to $6,000; their property tax is $8,600; and they give 5 percent of their income to charity.

Scenario 4 - Suburban Family:  A married couple in a New York City suburb has estimated state income tax of $17,290; their annual mortgage interest deduction is $14,000; and they pay property tax of $13,750 -- about the same amount they donate to charity.

Scenario 5 - Single Secretary In Manhattan: This New York City renter pays estimated state income tax of $8,148 and gives about $6,500 to charity.

Scenario 6 - Married Family In Austin:  This young couple rents and has income of $100,000. They give $5,000 a year to charity.

Scenario 7 - Median Income Couple In Portland:  This Portland, Oregon, couple earns close to the median household income for the U.S. Their property tax bill is $1,688; their deductible mortgage interest is $3,000; and estimated state income tax is $4,744.

Scenario 8 - Median Income Family In Milwaukee:  This married couple rents and has an estimated 2017 state income tax bill of $2,104.

Of course, this will all change when/if the GOP submits a final tax bill for consideration...but, like Obamacare, you may only find out how it truly impacts you after it has already been passed.

Why Is An Appendectomy In The United States 10 Times More Expensive Than An Appendectomy In Mexico?

This report was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

This is what can happen when you go to a socialized healthcare system. A lot of people out there believe that the United States has a free market healthcare system, but that is actually not true. The percentage of the population that receives government-subsidized healthcare is rapidly approaching 50 percent, and the healthcare industry may be the most heavily regulated sector of the entire U.S. economy. Every year the rules, red tape and regulations seem to get even worse, and every year health insurance premiums rise much faster than the overall rate of inflation. If we don’t start applying free market principles and start getting healthcare costs under control, our entire healthcare system could very easily implode.

I would like to share with you an excerpt from an article by former DEA agent David Hathaway. According to Hathaway, the average cost for an appendectomy in the United States is $33,000…

My son had an attack of appendicitis late Saturday night. I knew that the Obamacare inflated prices for surgery in the U.S. would be ridiculous and that the service would likely be impersonal, involve long waits, and be nerve-wracking. I have friends in the medical field so I inquired just for grins. The price for the latest routine appendectomy in my area was, my jaw dropped, $43,000. I read on-line that the average cost for an appendectomy in the U.S. is $33,000. I am not near some of the great direct-pay medical facilities in the U.S. like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, but I am near Mexico. I chose that option since I have often utilized foreign medical and dental facilities in the past and find the service and prices to be outstanding.

You can buy a very nice brand new car for $33,000.

How in the world did we get to the point where costs have escalated so far out of control? Should performing an appendectomy really be this expensive?

I can imagine that some of my readers may be thinking that the quality of care down in Mexico is much lower, but this is actually not the case at all. Here is more from David Hathaway…

My son was checked into a private room with private bath and satellite TV awaiting his surgery. The surgical staff was prepped and ready to start within an hour-and-a half of our arrival. The appendix was ruptured, so extra precautions were taken to clean and flush the abdominal cavity. Since the appendix was ruptured, the chief surgeon said that my son should stay two days to receive intravenous antibiotics to prevent the development of peritonitis.

The surgery was a success, and David’s son did stay in the hospital for two full days in order to receive the antibiotics that the doctor suggested.

But despite the extra time, the bill for the appendectomy was still less than 10 percent of what it would have been if the appendectomy had been performed in the United States…

The hospital stay was for 48 hours in a private room where my wife was allowed to spend the nights with my son sleeping on a couch in his room. This cost would have been significantly less if we hadn’t incurred emergency fees and if the appendectomy had not involved complications which required a longer stay and more medication. Despite all that, I though the total price of $2,830 dollars was very reasonable.

So why can’t we have hospitals like that on our side of the border?

This is yet another example that shows that Obamacare has got to go and that we need to get government out of the healthcare business.

We once had the greatest healthcare system in the history of the world, and we can do it again if we will just return to free market principles. Elections really matter, and we simply cannot allow the Democrats and the establishment Republicans to take us even further down the road of socialized medicine.

They have already turned our once great healthcare system into a giant disaster zone, and we need to show them the door before they can do even more damage.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream. 

If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.

In Major Victory For Trump, Senate Passes "Sweeping" Tax Bill Which Nobody Read: Here"s What"s In It

Shortly before 2am on Saturday, the Senate passed "the most sweeping rewrite of the U.S. tax code in three decades, slashing the corporate tax rate and providing temporary tax-rate cuts for most Americans" handing Republicans a badly needed legislative and political victory. Senators voted across party lines in a 51-49 vote, ending days of debate and "hand wringing" as leadership worked frantically behind the scenes to win over holdouts and get the proposal in line with the chamber’s rules.

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, who had cited concerns over the bill’s effects on federal deficits, was the only Republican dissenter. Corker, who is retiring after 2018, said in a statement ahead of the vote that he "wanted to get to yes" on the tax plan. "But at the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generations,” he said.

Corker"s dissent however was not enough to halt passage, and shortly thereafter Vice President Mike Pence presided over the final passage vote. GOP senators, who stayed on the Senate floor until the vote closed after midnight, broke out into applause after Pence announced the bill had passed.  

"This is a great day for the country," Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said during a 2 a.m. press conference after the vote.  "We have an opportunity now to make America more competitive, to keep jobs from being shipped off shore and to provide substantial relief for the middle class."

The bill would lower tax rates for individuals through 2025 and permanently cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% (more details below). The bill’s tax cuts for individuals are temporary in order to comply with budget rules that the measure can’t add to the deficit after 10 years. The bill would also repeal ObamaCare’s individual mandate, a priority for President Trump and many Republicans.

* * *

The vote brings the GOP close to delivering a much-needed policy win for their party and President Donald Trump. After the vote, Trump said on Twitter that he looks forward to signing a final bill before Christmas. The president expressed gratitude to McConnell and Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch for steering the measure through the Senate. “We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America. Special thanks to @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell and Chairman @SenOrrinHatch for shepherding our bill through the Senate. Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas! pic.twitter.com/gmWTny3SfS

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

On Saturday morning, Trump followed up his praise to the Senate GOP, tweeting the "Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate. Now these great Republicans will be going for final passage. Thank you to House and Senate Republicans for your hard work and commitment!"

Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate. Now these great Republicans will be going for final passage. Thank you to House and Senate Republicans for your hard work and commitment!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

* * *

Amid the republican jubilation over the passage of a bill which is heavily weighted to benefit corporations and pass-throughs, and will encourage all self-employed businesses to become LLCs, there was juist one problem: nobody actually read the 479-page bill.

As Montana Senator Jon Tester wrote late on Friday:

I was just handed a 479-page tax bill a few hours before the vote. One page literally has hand scribbled policy changes on it that can’t be read. This is Washington, D.C. at its worst. Montanans deserve so much better. pic.twitter.com/q6lTpXoXS0

— Senator Jon Tester (@SenatorTester) December 2, 2017

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo showed what the "handwritten notes on the page" looked like:

Senate Republicans are so desperate for a win they are going to pass a tax increase on New York with handwritten changes to the bill. pic.twitter.com/pT2Xvubiy2

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) December 2, 2017

Commenting on this, Senate Democrat Charles Schumer noted that a set of last-minute revisions to the bill changed it in ways that had yet to be analyzed by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official scorekeeper for the effects of tax legislation. “Is this really how Republicans are going to rewrite the tax code? Scrawled like something on the back of a napkin?” However, McConnell said the bill, the first text of which was introduced on Nov. 20, went “through the regular order.” He dismissed complaints like Schumer’s. “You complain about process when you’re losing,” McConnell said.

Bottom line: the chaotic process was similar to how Obamacare was passed on Christmas Eve in 2009: in fact maybe a slight improvement: at least this time Congress didn"t have to "pass the bill to find out what is in it." And it"s not like anyone reads these bills anyway.

So what happens next?

Before it goes to Trump, lawmakers will have to reconcile differences between the Senate bill and one the House passed last month, a process that will begin Monday. Although both versions share common topline elements, negotiations on individual provisions inserted to win votes, particularly in the Senate, may be protracted and difficult. The final product will end up being a central issue in the 2018 elections that will determine control of Congress.

“We’re going to take this message to the American people a year from now,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the vote.

* * *

Among the major overhauls, both the House and Senate measures would cut the corporate tax rate to 20% from 35% - though the Senate version would set that lower rate in 2019, a year later than the House bill would. Also, the Senate bill, unlike the House version, would provide only temporary tax relief to individuals, ending tax cuts for them in 2026. Both bills are expected to add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years, before accounting for any economic growth. Bloomberg reported that last minute revisions to help shore up GOP support added about $32.5bn to the measure’s 10-year cost, according to a one-page analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

The House and Senate bills also align on the contentious issue of individual deductions for state and local taxes: They’d eliminate all but a deduction for property taxes, which would be capped at $10,000. They differ on the home mortgage-interest deduction; the House bill would restrict that break to loans of $500,000 or less with regard to new purchases of homes. The Senate legislation would leave the current $1 million cap in place.

According to Bloomberg, the bills also differ on the tax rates they’d apply to multinational companies’ accumulated offshore earnings. The House bill would tax those profits at 14 percent for earnings held as cash and 7 percent for less-liquid assets. The revised Senate bill contains a lengthy section that has no direct mention of the rates, but a person familiar with the Senate plan said they’d be 14.5 percent for cash and 7.5 percent for less-liquid assets.

The Senate also approved a 23% tax deduction on business income earned from partnerships, limited liabilities and other so-called pass-through businesses. The House version would create a 25% tax rate for such business income, with restrictions on which businesses could qualify. Small businesses would get extra relief under the House legislation as well.

The House bill would also eliminate the estate tax, while the Senate version would limit the tax to fewer multimillion-dollar estates, but leave it in place. And after 2025, the limits would lift. Under current law, the estate tax applies a 40% levy to estates worth more than $5.49 million for individuals and $10.98 million for married couples. The Senate bill would temporarily double the exemption thresholds. The House bill would double the exemption thresholds, and then repeal the tax entirely in 2025.

As discussed previously, the House bill would consolidate the current seven individual tax brackets to four, leaving the top tax rate at 39.6%. The Senate bill would have seven brackets - with lower rates, and a top rate of 38.5 percent. As Bloomberg notes, "studies have shown that many of the tax bill’s benefits would go to the highest earners - and some middle-class taxpayers might actually pay more - a finding that could impact the House-Senate talks."

Most importantly, perhaps, the Senate bill includes a repeal of Obamacare’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty. The House bill does not.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two plans thanks to the WSJ:

Also while we have yet to get confirmation, below is a list of last minute changes and revisions that made it into the final bill per Reuters:

• PASS-THROUGHS: Senators Ron Johnson and Steve Daines announced their support for the tax bill after securing agreement on a bigger tax break for the owners of pass-through enterprises, including small businesses, S-corporations, partnerships and sole-proprietorships. An original 17.4 percent deduction would rise to 23 percent.


• FULL EXPENSING: Senator Jeff Flake, who was a holdout over deficit concerns, agreed to vote "yes" after Republican leaders agreed to change a provision allowing the full expensing of business capital investments to sunset after five years. Flake worried that Congress would be unable to eliminate the benefit cold turkey, allowing it to bleed red ink for years to come. But the Arizona Republican says the change would instead phase out full expensing over three years beginning in year six.


• RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Senator Susan Collins said she persuaded Republican leaders to retain catch-up contributions to retirement accounts for church, charity, school and public employees.


• MEDICAL EXPENSES: Collins also said she was able to include language to reduce the threshold for deducting unreimbursed medical expenses for two years to 7.5 percent of household income from 10 percent.


• STATE AND LOCAL PROPERTY TAXES: Collins has proposed an amendment that would retain a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes.


• INDIVIDUAL ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Rescinding a proposed repeal of the AMT and instead increase exemption levels and phase-out thresholds is also on the table.


• CORPORATE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: So is rescinding a proposed repeal of the corporate AMT.


• REPATRIATION: Another change could be to increase tax rates on U.S. corporate profits held overseas to 14 percent for liquid assets and 7 percent for illiquid holdings, up from 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively

Attention now shifts to a House-Senate conference committee - a specially appointed, temporary panel that will be charged with hashing out the differences in the bills and preparing a final version for both chambers to consider. Party leaders will select a small group of lawmakers, likely from the House and Senate tax-writing panels in each chamber, who would then be approved by each chamber. That work could start as early as Monday, with many high-stakes issues to be worked through. The deadline of Dec. 31 is an artificial one, though - aimed partly at securing a victory well in advance of the 2018 congressional elections. Republicans would have until the end of 2018 before they lose their ability to clear final passage in the Senate without a filibuster.

GOP Releases All 479 Pages Of The Tax Reform Bill - "Vote-A-Rama" Begins

The Senate tax bill is headed for a potentially unlimited series of decisions on possible amendments - known as “vote-a-rama” - as the full text of the revised bill has just been released.

As Bloomberg reports, it’s unclear how long that process might take, though we do note that unlike Obamacare, Senators will at least get to see what"s in the bill before they vote on it.

Democrats could spend hours offering numerous amendments meant to highlight any flaws they believe the bill contains.

Full Text:

What Americans Spent The Most Money On In The Third Quarter

One month ago, when the BEA released its first estimate of the hurricane-impacted economy during the third quarter (which came in at a stronger than expected 3.0%)  we were surprised to report that according to the Department of Commerce, in the third quarter the biggest driver of marginal spending was car sales (technically Motor Vehicles and Parts), which increased by $15.6 billion to $463.5 billion. Which, as we said at the time and considering recent US and global automakers data, was paradoxical in light of the ongoing decline in overall sales in the second half of 2017, and it was far too early to expect the post-hurricane spending spree. It was also surprising because as Americans splurged on cars, they pulled back on gasoline purchases, which was the single biggest detractor to spending, subtracting a marginal $3.5 billion in PCE, to $283.6 billion.

 

In any case, we concluded by saying that "we now await for the revisions to this initial estimate over the coming two months, because something tells us that the auto spending spree will be thoroughly revised well lower."

One month later, when the BEA released its second Q3 GDP estimate, it appears we were right: the contribution from motor vehicles was indeed revised lower, but not nearly as dramatically as we expected, only from a marginal increase of $15.6 million to $13.5 million.

And yet, many other line items did see a downward revision, which means that something had to increase sharply to compensate for the downward revisions among other spending components. Sure enough, something did: the old faithful "plug" which has saved the US economy every quarter for the past 4 years: Healthcare, or as it is better known, Obamacare, because with Trump failing to repeal Obama"s signature health law, it means that Healthcare will merrily "contribute to GDP" for years to come, by being the single biggest marginal spending item for the foreseeable future.

Finally, for a comparison of how dramatically the contribution of "Healthcare" was revised higher, here is a chart showing side by side the change in spending among all key line items. One can almost hear the orders "from above" to make GDP 3% or higher at any cost when looking at this chart.

Top Democrats "Abruptly" Pull Out Of White House Meeting After Trump Twitter Attack

Following this morning"s tweet, in which Trump said that he was meeting with top Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to keep the government open, but because "they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked", he "doesn"t see a deal", and which sent the T-Bill market turmoiling as mid-December government shutdown odds surged, moments ago the top two Democratic leaders in Congress pulled out "abruptly" (in AP"s words) of the previously scheduled meeting with President Donald Trump.

Instead of meeting Trump, Schumer and Pelosi shot back with a statement asking for talks with top GOP leaders in Congress. The top democrats said they’d skip a “show meeting” at the White House and instead ask for a meeting with their Republican counterparts, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Given that the President doesn’t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.

Some Democrats have called for any year-end spending deal to include legislation that would codify an Obama administration policy providing protection against deportation for young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Trump, who announced in September he was ending the program, has said any deal protecting the so-called “Dreamers” should be paired with funding for a border wall and legislation that would reduce legal immigration.

If Democrats and Republicans do not reach a deal on spending by Dec. 8, the federal government could face a partial shutdown. Trump’s meeting with the Congressional leaders, which will also include Republicans House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is scheduled for 3 p.m.

As a reminder, the Dec. 8 deadline was set in a deal Schumer and Pelosi struck with Trump - against the wishes of Ryan and McConnell - to avoid a government shutdown and debt default in September. They agreed to fund the government at current levels and suspend the debt limit for three months.

As Bloomberg reminds us, since that deal was struck, Congress has focused mostly on a tax overhaul and has made little progress reaching a spending deal to keep the government open. Other issues have also piled up, including the fate of cost-sharing subsidies that help defray deductibles and coinsurance payments for low-income patients with Obamacare insurance policies. Trump stopped paying the subsidies.

The negotiations also include efforts to lift legislative caps on military spending, raise the debt limit, provide more funding for disaster assistance, and extend a children’s health insurance program and an intelligence surveillance program. Several of those issues face year-end deadlines and may end up in a huge spending plan that requires votes from both Republicans and Democrats.

The Trump administration does not want to include immigration as part of the year-end spending deal to keep the government open, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday. “We hope that the Democrats aren’t going to put our service members abroad at risk by trying to hold the government hostage over partisan politics, and attaching that,” Sanders told reporters on Monday.

Markets reacted favorably to the news, with stocks jumping on speculation that a meeting between the top Democrats and Republicans will be more productive than the "show meeting" between Trump and the democratic duo.

While stock euphoria is predictable, those curious if the government"s shutdown odds are rising are urged to look at the Dec. 7-Dec. 21 Bill spread which, ominously, continues to blow out.

In Win For White House, Rand Paul Says He Will Vote "Yes" On Tax Reform

In a surprising reversal that President Donald Trump will undoubtedly tout as a major victory, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has publicly confirmed that he will be voting ‘Yes’ on the GOP tax plan when the senate votes on it later this week.

Paul says he will vote ‘yes’ even though the tax overhaul “isn’t perfect” and he’d like to see a larger cut. In an opinion piece published on Fox News’s website, Paul explained the reasoning behind his change of heart in greater detail.

Ultimately, Paul said, he is voting ‘yes’ because the US tax code, which has 97 different federal taxes, must be simplified. Congress can always authorize more cuts at a later date. In fact, Paul says if the public will is strong enough, Congress could authorize a new tax cut every year.

Currently, there are at least 97 different federal taxes. The tax code that instructs people how they must hand over their hard-earned money to government spans some 74,000-plus pages.

 

This is absurd, and so is the fact that government will collect over $3 trillion from taxpayers next year but still is not satisfied.

 

One of the main differences between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans, in general, favor less government and more tax cuts. That’s why I’m pleased to see us moving forward on a plan for tax cuts, and why I hope to vote to pass such a cut in the coming weeks.

Paul said he supports the Senate proposal to end Obamacare’s individual mandate penalizing people who don’t have health insurance, and that he would like to see preservation of some state and local tax deductions.

He also applauded his fellow senators for abandoning the concept of revenue neutrality, saying he’d like to see the tax cuts eliminate even more than the $1.5 trillion in revenues expected over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the CBO. Paul said he’d be comfortable with a reduction in revenue of up to $2.5 trillion.

I spoke out all year against the GOP leaders’ initial plan to make their tax reform “revenue neutral” — meaning not really a cut. I’m pleased to see my point of view has prevailed, and the current tax plan calls for a $1.5 trillion cut over the next ten years. I would have liked to see more — in fact, I offered an amendment to move it up to $2.5 trillion — but I’ve stated many times that as long as it is a real cut, I’ll vote for it, even if it isn’t as large as I would prefer.

 

I’m also pleased to note that, in part by my urging, the Senate tax-plan writers have included repeal of the ObamaCare individual mandate in the tax plan. The mandate is clearly a tax, a fact that was established by the Supreme Court when it upheld ObamaCare. So including it in the tax bill only makes sense. In addition, with CBO scoring it as a $350 billion savings, repealing the mandate helped pave the way for increased middle-class tax cuts, like an expanded child tax credit.

Winning Paul"s vote has been a top priority of President Trump, who has often expressed admiration for the Kentucky senator even though Paul has, until this point, been one of the most obstinate opponents of the Trump agenda.

However, his support doesn’t guarantee passage for the tax plan: At least five other senators have either said they’re not voting for the bill, or that they’re on the fence. However, Fox News is reporting that a deal is in the works to add more deductions to the bill to help win over Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who said two weeks ago that he would vote "no" on the bill. However, Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and John McCain remain on the fence. And while Montana"s Steve Daines has raised hackles about the bill because, he says, it favors corporations over small businesses, he recently touted a "productive" conversation with Trump, and appears to be leaning toward a yes.

We now await Trump’s congratulatory response to Paul’s decision. It should be coming any minute now.

GOP leadership says they will bring the bill to a vote on Thursday. But of course, if they fail to rally support from Republican holdouts, that could change.

Obamacare’s Revenge: The IRS Will Not Process Your Tax Return Unless You Tell Them Whether You Have Health Insurance Or Not

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

Yes, this is a true story. I was completely shocked when I learned about this too, and this just underscores the importance of repealing the individual mandate immediately. Shortly after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order which was intended to move the IRS away from enforcing Obamacare’s individual mandate, but now the IRS has found a way around that executive order. According to the official AARP website, the IRS has announced that it will not process any tax returns from individuals that are not willing to disclose whether they currently have health insurance or not…

The Internal Revenue Service won’t process individual tax returns in 2018 unless taxpayers indicate whether they have health insurance coverage or an exemption.

The move, announced last month, reverses course from this year, when the IRS said it would not require filers to indicate on 1040 tax forms whether they had health insurance. Filers were still required to have medical insurance or pay a penalty, but the IRS accepted and processed returns even if taxpayers didn’t indicate coverage status.

So what this means is that you will not get your refund until you tell the IRS if you have health insurance.

And if you don’t have health insurance and you don’t qualify for an exemption, you could be hit with a very painful financial penalty.

Of course purchasing health insurance in some parts of the country is enough of a penalty as it is. For example, I recently wrote about a family of four in Virginia that is now facing the prospect of paying $3,000 a month for health insurance.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

And it also turns out that the IRS is going back and sending threatening letters to those that didn’t indicate if they were covered or not on previous tax returns. Here is more from the AARP…

IRS spokesman Bruce Friedland said it followed a review of IRS procedures.

“The IRS has determined that ‎it is more burdensome for taxpayers to allow them to file an incomplete tax return and then have to manage follow-up letters and potentially amend their return,’’ Friedland said. “Identifying omissions and requiring taxpayers to provide health coverage information at the point of filing makes it easier for the taxpayer to successfully file a tax return and minimizes related refund delays.”

In September, the IRS started sending letters to about 130,000 taxpayers who didn’t address the health care requirement on 2014 and 2015 tax returns.

So if you left that section of your tax return blank in previous years, you should be expecting a letter in the mail very soon.

At this point, many of you that are reading this article are probably starting to get very angry. After all, didn’t President Trump sign an executive order earlier this year that was going to end enforcement of the individual mandate?

Unfortunately, that was not the case at all. In fact, Politico is reporting that the Trump administration “is still dutifully enforcing Obamacare’s individual mandate”…

The Trump administration is still dutifully enforcing Obamacare’s individual mandate, despite early signals it might undermine the unpopular linchpin of the health care law.

Weeks after the close of tax season, the IRS continues to process penalties from potentially millions of taxpayers who refused to purchase health insurance last year.

That’s even though hours after taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump issued a vaguely worded executive order instructing federal agencies to waive or defer parts of Obamacare that would “impose a fiscal burden” on states, individuals or health care providers.

Enough is enough.

Obamacare should have been repealed on the very first day of the Trump administration, but unfortunately the RINOs in Congress are going to keep blocking any effort to do that. Elections really matter, and in 2018 we need to kick out the RINOs and put in new leaders that are fully committed to a 100% repeal of Obamacare.

We also need to do something about the IRS.  They have always been a rogue agency, but now they have gotten completely and totally out of control. I am running for Congress in Idaho’s first congressional district, and I believe that we should completely shut down the IRS.

The status quo is simply not acceptable. Obamacare is financially crippling families all across America, and we should be absolutely disgusted that Congress has not found a solution to this problem even though they have had almost an entire year to get something done.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream. 

If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.