Did 15 Million – Not 6.6 Million – Pay Obamacare’s Mandate Penalty?
The media have reported that 6.6 million “taxpayers” paid the Obamacare penalty (tax) for not obeying the individual mandate to buy federally qualified health insurance in 2014. However, the actual figure must be much larger.
However, the report by the Taxpayer Advocate discusses “returns,” not individual taxpayers. It reports that 2.6 million 2014 returns claimed Obamacare’s premium tax credits, totaling $7.7 billion paid out, and an average pay out of $3,000).
We know from other sources that about 6.14 million individuals claimed tax credits for Obamacare coverage last year (87 percent of 7.06 million individuals). (And that is only if we count people who signed up during open enrollment, which ended in March 2014. Because special enrollment continued throughout the year, most of those who signed up later would also have claimed tax credits.)
So it looks like we have at least 2.36 Obamacare-enrolled individuals per household filing a tax return claiming a premium tax credit. (Although, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports an average tax credit of $264 per individual per month, which would add up to $3,168 per year – about the same as the Taxpayer Advocate reports for the average return. Of course, only about half of Obamacare enrollees stay enrolled for the whole year, so maybe these dollar figures are not as confusing as they initially appear.)
Anyway, if we flip the number of individuals per return around, we would guesstimate that those 6.6 million returns that paid penalties for not obeying Obamacare represent about 15 million individuals.
There are many actions the Republicans could advocate for that would bring down the cost of health care services including:
1) Removing the provision of all ambulatory services from hospitals – they are more expensive than other providers (MD offices, freestanding ambulatory surgery centers etc.), less convenient, less patient friendly, etc. Germany banned hospitals from delivering ambulatory health services in 1933;
2) Require competitive bidding for drugs for Medicare patients;
3) Redesign the Medicare program so that its focus is not short term, hospital based acute care but rather the effective community-based outpatient management of chronic disease;
4) and, Further restrict the use of many lab tests that have been proved to be of little value;
Thank you. I wonder if there isn’t more to the story of Germany banning hospital-based ambulatory care in 1933. Germany elected the Nazi government in 1033, so I’d be cautious about adopting what they did. Nevertheless, we endorse site-neutral payments, which would force hospitals to reduce costs or lose business.
With respect to competitive bidding for drugs, please clarify. Medicare Part D is run by competitive bid, which has led to costs much lower than anticipated in 2003.