Talk Straight

Obama Sticks It To the Middle Class With New Obamacare Tax on Dental Braces…

Obama stuck it to the middle class again by taxing braces and limiting the cap on Flexible Spending Accounts.

The new Obamacare regulations will affect middle class families making just over $53,000 the most.

Americans for Tax Reform reported

In 2013, the tax increases in Obamacare will increasingly conspire against kitchen-table family healthcare decisions.

As just one example, below are some of the taxes that will impact the purchase of dental braces:

Obamacare Medical Device Tax: As of Jan.1, Obamacare imposes a new tax of 2.3 percent on medical device manufacturers, including those who make dental braces. The tax is imposed on gross sales — even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. While the tax will be paid to the IRS by the manufacturer, the tax will be passed along as a higher cost of the product, ultimately to be borne by the parent buying the braces for their child. With the cost of braces being as high as $7,625 this new tax could raise the cost of these braces by $175.

Obamacare Flexible Spending Account Cap: As of Jan. 1, the 30-35 million Americans who use a pre-tax Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs face a new government cap of $2,500. This will squeeze $13 billion of tax money from Americans over the next ten years. (Currently, the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap.) A parent looking to sock away extra money to pay for braces would find themselves quickly hitting this new cap, meaning they would have to pony up some or all of the cost with after-tax dollars. Needless to say, this tax will especially impact middle class families.

Obamacare “Haircut” to the Medical Itemized Deduction: Faced with higher prices for braces and a reduced ability to pay for them with their FSA, parents might decide to deduct the cost of braces on their tax returns. Unfortunately, Obamacare makes this harder, too.

Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical and dental expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). As of Jan. 1, Obamacare imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income.

According to the IRS, 10 million families took advantage of this tax deduction in 2009, the latest year of available data. Almost all are middle class. The average taxpayer claiming this deduction earned just over $53,000 annually.

Read the rest here.

Great job, Obama voters!

Weren’t you the ones bitching about the cost of healthcare?

Health insurance rates going up by double digits due to ObamaCare…

I told you, you dumb bastards:

From Hot Air:

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

I, and many other people, were telling you for months that ObamaCare was going to cause health insurance premiums to shoot through the roof and how did you reply?   Oh right!  We were racist, fear-mongering, extremist liars who wanted poor people to die in the streets.

Guess what? Now that your Dear Leaders dream legislation was crammed down our throats, not only are you paying more but you also are required to pay more for the same policies you could have gotten a lot cheaper if ‘BamaCare didn’t pass…but if you don’t, Dear Leader will tax you.

Pardon me while I point and laugh at you.

Reap it!!

Another Franchise Slashes Workers Hours Due To ObamaCare…

Obama: Helping the little people.

From News 9

The Taco Bell in Guthrie cuts its full-time employees’ hours to avoid mandates under the new health care law.

Now, a mother of three who works at that restaurant is speaking out. Under the Affordable Care Act, any company that has more than 50 full-time workers falls under the new health insurance mandate.

We talked to the company that owns the Guthrie restaurant today, and it confirmed the cuts. Now, employees there aren’t allowed to work more than 28 hours a week.

Johnna Davis has worked at the Taco Bell in Guthrie since September. She’s seen a 200 dollar cut in her paycheck since a new store policy went into effect.

“What we were being told was one thing, and that was, ‘we’re going to offer benefits, we’ll just keep all of our full time employees and then come December, their whole story changed,” Johnna Davis said.

She says her manager held a meeting before Christmas, saying employees’ hours would be cut in the new year.

“They informed everybody that nobody was considered full-time any longer, that everybody was now considered part-time, and [they] would be cutting hours back to 28 hours or less due to Obamacare,” Davis said.

Under the Affordable Care Act, companies are required to provide insurance to its full-time employees, or face fines. Davis would’ve qualified for an insurance plan.

“Several of the other people I work with, some of them are single parents, and we do the best we can, and 28 hours a week just isn’t going to cut it for the bills,” Davis said.

And just think, people.  Even though your hours are getting cut, or you’re being laid off, ObamaCare still mandates that you purchase health insurance or you’ll receive a fine…which you can’t afford because your hours got cut or you were laid off.

Yep. That Obama is a genius.

Aetna CEO: Obamacare Could Double Insurance Premiums…

Imagine that.

From CNBC:

To provide all Americans with health insurance, premiums will have to rise to pay for it, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC’s ”Closing Bell” on Wednesday.

“If we’re going to insure all Americans, which is a worthy and appropriate cause, then somebody has to pay for it,” Bertolini said of the expected premium increases under Obamacare.

Bertolini said that insurance premiums could double in some places just on the basis of what types of policies people buy today.

He also said that when Obamacare is fully implemented, it won’t start the way people had hoped and it won’t be cheaper.

Over the longer run, the key to bringing down premiums will be controlling health care costs, he added. “It’ll be fits and starts, but we’ll get there,” Bertolini said.

Higher premiums also will not necessarily mean higher margins for Aetna. “The people coming into the system will be sicker because they have not used services,” Bertolini said. “So in the initial part of this program it will cost more to take care of people because they have been going without health care for so long.”

Wow. Free healthcare isn’t actually free?  Who would’a thought?

And how exactly does one ‘control health care costs”? Maybe it’s just me but that sounds a lot like rationing healthcare and having some government appointed overseers deciding on who gets care and who doesn’t….you know…to keep costs down.

Great move, Dems!!

Domino’s: We Will Have To Post 34 Million Signs In Each Store To Comply With Obamacare Nutritional Regulations…

Yep. You Obama/ObamaCare supporters are pure genius!

From Washington Secrets:

New Obamacare regulations targeting the fast food and grocery store market that require signs detailing calorie and nutritional information on every product will force pizza makers like Domino’s to post up to 34 million different signs in every store: One for every possible pizza order.

“It’s not like a Big Mac. Pizza is customizable, there are options to factor in,” said Jenny Fouracre-Petko, legislative director for Domino’s and a member of the trade group American Pizza Community. “There are 34 million pizza combinations. We’ve done the math.”

Ditto for the grocery stores, which are shifting to providing more fresh made and baked goods, said Erik Lieberman, counsel for the Food Marketing Institute. “Consider just one fresh-baked blueberry muffin. If one is sold, you need a nutrition sign or sticker. If a half dozen are sold, a different one is required. Same if you sell a dozen.”

Wow. 34 MILLION signs required by law in each store! Tell me, ObamaCare supporters, what do you think that will do to the price of your pizza? Because, if they obey the new law, in order to fit all of those signs inside their business, they’re going to have to greatly enlarge the square footage of their business.  So in addition to have the price hike to pay for the signs, you’re going to pay for the increase of business size (at all of their stores) in addition to paying more for the additional property tax and any other attached fees.

But, realistically, Dominoes would not be able to afford to pay for the signs, added space, taxes and fees, so will most likely just go out of business.

But who cares if a few thousand more people lose their jobs-you maybe might get ‘free’ birth control or something out of it.

Way to go, you goobers.

New Study Reveals Gruesome Practice of Starving Sickly Babies in British Health System….

Coming to America?  Probably.

From The Daily Mail:

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’.

Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.

But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.

One doctor has admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital alone.

Writing in a leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take an average of ten days during which a baby becomes ‘smaller and shrunken’.

The LCP – on which 130,000 elderly and terminally-ill adult patients die each year – is now the subject of an independent inquiry ordered by ministers.

The use of end of life care methods on disabled newborn babies was revealed in the doctors’ bible, the British Medical Journal.

Earlier this month, an un-named doctor wrote of the agony of watching the protracted deaths of babies. The doctor described one case of a baby born with ‘a lengthy list of unexpected congenital anomalies’, whose parents agreed to put it on the pathway.

The doctor wrote: ‘They wish for their child to die quickly once the feeding and fluids are stopped. They wish for pneumonia. They wish for no suffering. They wish for no visible changes to their precious baby.

‘Their wishes, however, are not consistent with my experience. Survival is often much longer than most physicians think; reflecting on my previous patients, the median time from withdrawal of hydration to death was ten days.

‘Parents and care teams are unprepared for the sometimes severe changes that they will witness in the child’s physical appearance as severe dehydration ensues.

You voted for it (or at least the ‘free’ birth control portion of it) and this is what you’re going to be looking at in a few years. Hope none of your baby brothers/sisters/your own babies get too sick or Big Brother may deem their treatment not to be “cost effective” then you can watch them slowly die.  I didn’t want it so don’t blame me.  You’re the idiots who voted the creator of this type of monstrosity back into office so reap what you sow, flying monkeys.

You’ll get what you voted for and everything you deserve.