Biden just made Obamacare better
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/11/2128374/-Biden-just-made-Obamacare-betterBiden just made Obamacare better
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday October 11, 2022 · 6:42 PM EDT
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He said he was going to do it, and he did it. President Joe Biden just made the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that much better, that much more affordable for more than 5.1 million people, about 2.8 million of them children who have been priced out. As of next year, the ‘family glitch’ is history, a fix more than eight years in the making.
When lawmakers were writing the law, they found what they thought might be a relatively harmless saving: people who had access to health care through their jobs that was too expensive could get subsidies to help pay for ACA coverage—but only for themselves, and not their families. That cut millions of family members out of affordable coverage. Employers are generally pretty generous when it comes to providing coverage for individuals, paying about 83% of the cost of insurance for them. But on average, they only pick up 73% of the cost for families. What could cost an individual $7,470 out of pocket annually could cost $21,342 for the average family, and the ACA couldn’t help.
That’s done now. The IRS has finalized the rule change to make sure that affordability—what percentage of the paycheck would have to go toward coverage—is based on family premiums as necessary. In 2022, the threshold for “affordability” of employer-sponsored coverage is 9.61% of household income; if insurance costs ate up more than that, then you would qualify for an individual subsidy under the ACA. It’s going to drop to 9.12% in 2023—and will apply to whole family coverage instead of individual.
This is why we have to keep electing Democrats, by the way. Because they still are working to make life better for as many people as they can. Do you what you can to help these races up and down the ballot across the country.
The White House, in announcing the intent of fix the glitch, estimated that about 200,000 currently uninsured people would gain coverage with the fix.
The IRS, in the final rule, was cautious in its estimates. It predicts anywhere from 600,000 to 2.3 million newly eligible people would enroll in new ACA coverage, and between 80,000 and 700,000 currently uninsured individuals could gain coverage, which is a pretty big variable. The White House’s decision to land in the low-middle range of that estimate was probably a good bet.
This is not sexy stuff. It’s wonky and boring and no one—no one!—likes to talk about health insurance. But it really, really matters to the millions of people who fell through that one specific crack, and it happened because Democrats really do still care about doing policy stuff that helps people.
It’s not universal coverage and not universal care, by any means, but it’s still good and still fulfilling President Joe Biden’s promise to make Obamacare better. Which is absolutely fine by Mr. Obama.
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You've got that right. Small business owners are the back bone of this country!! We're job creators. 
When I left my "regular" job to work for our family businesses, we qualified for insurance through the ACA two years and got a little bit of subsidy to help out. As our second small business took off (we're fortunate, I know...that doesn't always happen) we no longer were able to get the subsidy and had to find insurance on the open market. We can still get insurance via healthcare.org but the prices are the same as what we're paying now so it isn't worth it to deal with the paperwork and endless emails from healthcare.gov
The ACA did so much good for so many people. I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trashing it because I'm not. The problem is that there's a huge loophole for self employed people and small business owners where coverage is beyond expensive...more than my mortgage, power, water and garbage combined! I write my congress critter annually but he's a tRump humper so he's not at all interested in helping anyone but himself.
OK... well MAYBE Obama is still more rock star than BIDEN, BUT slugger JOE keeps hitting them out of the ballpark!
AND ROCKSTARS DO PERFORM AT JOE'S events, vs calling tRump et all and saying, "NO stop using my music."
Biden holds campaign rally, Jon Bon Jovi performance
