ObamaCare: Here’s Why Millions Are Expected To Reject Mandated Insurance, Pay Fines

ObamaCare, despite its second court victory, seems to continue to be seen as a boondoggle to some American health insurance purchasers. The Inquisitr reported in June that ObamaCare premiums were going to spike in 2016, even more than they had already in January 2015.

With that in mind, it should probably come as no surprise that according to MarketWatch, millions of Americans are avoiding ObamaCare like the plague. More specifically, 7.5 million Americans  decided not to enroll in ObamaCare (those citizens combined had to pay $1.5 billion in ObamaCare fines). The penalty for refusing the government-mandated insurance means those who refused have been paying an average of $200 per person. For a healthy family that chooses NOT to participate in Obamacare and, instead, purchases short term medical coverage, this penalty plus the much lower cost of market-rate coverage STILL results signObama and his staffificant healthcare costs savings over comparable coverage under Obamacare.

The 7.5 million Americans who rejected ObamaCare, and had to pay the fine, were 1.5 million more than the Obama Administration had already estimated would refuse. The IRS, in a public statement, gave a broader range of the cost of the ObamaCare fines those several million people paid.

“About 40% of these payments were $100 or less and about 95% of these payments were $500 or less.” There were also ObamaCare tax subsidies that were given out to some Americans based on income, who were not among the 7.5 million who rejected the mandated insurance and paid their fine. Newsweek reports that 2.7 million taxpayers claimed $9 billion in ObamaCare subsidies, which amounted to an average of $3,400 per person. According to the data, 40 percent claimed less than $2,000 through the ObamaCare subsidies, another 40 percent claimed somewhere between $2,000 to $5,000, and the remaining 20 received $5,000 or more. There were 12 million Americans who were exempt from a fine or a purchase on the ObamaCare exchanges — they included low-income individual and American Indians.

The number of Americans who need to pay an ObamaCare-mandated fine is projected to possibly go up. The IRS estimates that 5.1 million Americans have neither signed up for ObamaCare, claimed any type of exemption, nor paid the mandated fine.

Marketwatch says it is believed that many of the 5.1 million that have yet to pay, sign up, or claim exemption to ObamaCare will find their way to one of the above options because the individual mandate’s fine is set to keep going up over time.

ObamaCare has poll vaulted over two Supreme Court challenges, despite the constant issues that crop up under the radar and increase healthcare costs. The once fledgling law seems to be here for the foreseeable future.