A few friends are sharing this post on social media:<\/p>\n
I received the following from a friend in Ohio, a grandmother in her 60s:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I actually made it through this morning at 8 a.m. I have a pre-existing condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I chose Tier 2 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSilver Plan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and my monthly insurance premiums came out to $597 with a $13,988 yearly deductible! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this so I \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOpt-Out\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and chose to continue along with no insurance.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I received an email tonight at 5 p.m. informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then you make it to the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcREPERCUSSIONS PORTION\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153non-payment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of yearly fine.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153First, your drivers license will be suspended until paid, and if you go 24 consecutive months with \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnon-payment,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can agree to give your bank information so that they can easily \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAutomatically withdraw\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 your \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpenalties\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly! This by no means is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfree\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or even \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcaffordable.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Apparently the Killeen Daily Herald<\/a> actually ran it as a letter to the editor on their website.
\n
\nIt’s also been spotted on the Facebook page for Healthcare.gov, chain emails and more.<\/p>\nReading it sent up all sorts of red flags for me. So I did a quick investigation myself using the Kaiser Family Subsidy Calculator<\/a>.<\/p>\n
And yes, it’s true a single person making $55k a year will not receive any federal subsidy on their insurance. It’s more than 4 times above the national poverty level.<\/p>\n
But according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s estimates, a single person in Texas, making $55k a year, would pay an estimated $2,557 per year or $213 a month (which equals 4.65% of your household income and covers 100% of the overall premium). <\/p>\n
Their estimate for someone living in Ohio is $2,333.<\/p>\n
These premiums are based on the Silver Plans (which was mentioned above).<\/p>\n
The Bronze Plan would lower the premiums to an estimated $1749 per year or $145 a month.<\/p>\n
So either the Kaiser Family Foundation is WAY off, or perhaps these claims aren’t quite on the up and up.<\/p>\n
Luckily, PolitiFact has more information<\/a> on the claims.<\/p>\n
I’ll let you read their report for yourself but to summarize their investigation – this email\/letter received a Pants of Fire rating.<\/p>\n
The post includes many elements that make no sense or are flat-out wrong — and can be easily debunked by reading the law or reliable summaries of it. We rate it Pants on Fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I know lots of folks don’t like the Affordable Care Act – some for very strong reasons – others just because it’s been presented by a Democrat and not a Republican – but PLEASE don’t spread misinformation like this no matter what your feelings are about the law. It does a disservice to us all – and makes me want to unfriend you on social media that much quicker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few friends are sharing this post on social media: I received the following from a friend in Ohio, a grandmother in her 60s: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I actually made it through this morning at 8 a.m. I have a pre-existing condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I chose Tier 2 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSilver Plan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 … Continue reading A closer look at claims about the Affordable Care Act<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[4538,4542,3926],"class_list":["post-12156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-letter-to-the-editor","tag-obamacare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-3a4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12156"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12163,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12156\/revisions\/12163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}