Editorial Comment:
Readers of this blog know that I believe traditional marriage offers the state something that 'gay marriage' and non-committed relationships do not, and that committed man-woman marriage should be protected and nurished. ObamaCare, like so many of this President's activities, strikes a powerful blow against traditional marriage.
Following is a 2010 article analyzing ObamaCare. This is the law that the Republicans are now trying to de-fund or delay. There are tables and supporting data with the original article, found here.
I would like to say "enjoy" your reading, but you could only enjoy it if you want to see traditional marriage destroyed. So I hope you don't enjoy it, but that you might be awakened to what is happening in our country under the guise of "affordable" "health" "care."
Curt
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The New Federal Wedding Tax: How Obamacare Would Dramatically Penalize Marriage
One bizarre feature of the Senate-passed health care bill is its
pervasive bias against marriage. Under the bill, couples would face
massive financial penalties if they marry or remain married. Conversely,
couples who cohabit without marriage are given highly preferential
financial treatment. If the Senate bill becomes law, saying “I do” would
cost some couples over $10,000 per year.[1]
Most people feel that marriage is a healthful institution that
society should encourage and strengthen. Inexplicably, the Senate health
care bill takes the opposite approach. At nearly all age and income
levels, the bill profoundly discriminates against married couples,
providing far less support to a husband and wife than to a cohabiting
couple with the same income. If the bill is enacted, married couples
across America will be taxed to provide discriminatory benefits to
couples who cohabit, divorce, or never marry.
Analyzing Anti-Marriage Discrimination in the Senate Health Care Bill
The Senate bill is designed to provide health care benefits that
are substantially more generous for lower-income persons. The bill’s
anti-marriage penalties occur because of the income counting and benefit
structure rules of the bill. If a two-earner couple is married, the
bill counts their income jointly; since the joint income will be higher,
a married couple’s health care subsidies would be lower.[2]
By contrast, if a couple cohabits rather than marrying, the bill
counts each partner’s income separately. Separate counting means that,
all else being equal, cohabiters would be treated as having lower
incomes and therefore receive disproportionately greater government
benefits. The bottom line: under the bill, a cohabiting couple would
receive substantially higher health care subsidies than a married
couple even when the total incomes of both couples are identical.
Tables 1 through 5 in the appendix illustrate this pattern of
pervasive financial discrimination against married couples. In the
examples in the charts, the couples are assumed to have no dependent
children, neither partner has employer-provided health insurance, and
each couple’s earned income is assumed to be split equally between the
partners—if a married couple has an income of $50,000, the husband is
assumed to earn $25,000 and the wife $25,000. (The details of the
analysis are described in the appendix to this paper.)
As Tables 4 and 5 show, under the Senate bill, married couples in
general would receive between $1,500 and $10,000 less in government
health care support than would cohabiting couples with the same total
income.
Government Bonuses for Refusing to Tie the Knot
The stiff anti-marriage penalties and heavy “cohabitation
bonuses” built into the Senate Obamacare bill send a negative social
message. In addition, the bill creates large incentives for couples to
“game the system,” allowing and encouraging them to reap large financial
rewards by living together rather than marrying.
For example, a young couple without children, age 20, each making
$20,000, would receive $4,317 more in health benefits each year if they
cohabit rather than marry. Slipping on the wedding ring would cut the
couple’s annual disposable income by more than 10 percent. Rather than
pay this new wedding tax, the couple is likely to postpone marriage or
forego it entirely.
Penalizing Married Empty Nesters
Under the bill, the anti-marriage penalties increase sharply as a
couple ages. The discriminatory anti-marriage penalties are
particularly severe on middle-class “empty nester” couples. Many of
those couples would pay an effective tax of $5,000 to $10,000 per year
for the right to remain married.
For example, a 60-year-old couple, each earning $30,000 per year,
would receive $10,425 per year less in benefits if they marry or remain
married. Simply by divorcing and then living together, the couple can
boost their post-tax, take-home income by nearly one-fourth.
Similarly, a 50-year-old couple, each earning $20,000 per year,
would receive $5,114 less in benefits each year if they marry or remain
married. By divorcing and then living together, the couple could
increase its income by more than $50,000 over a decade.
Hammering Low-Income Married Couples
Low-income couples are not immune from the bill’s aggressive
wedding taxes. A 60-year-old husband and wife, each with an income of
$15,000, would pay over $4,000 per year if they remain married. Put in
other terms, the government would offer an annual bonus of $4,212 if the
couple divorces and then cohabits.
The Lifetime Marriage Tax
Annual penalties actually understate the depth of the
anti-marriage bias in the Senate bill. The bill’s wedding tax is
perpetual. Penalties against married couples add up year after year as
long as the couple remains married. Some couples who remained married
throughout their adult lives would face cumulative penalties of over
$200,000 during the course of their marriage.
Defending the Indefensible
Proponents of the Senate health care bill might argue that these
marriage penalties would reach their full effect only in situations
where neither partner had employer-provided health insurance. It is true
that married couples with employer coverage would face less bias;
however, this defense of the bill remains weak because discrimination
against marriage remains discrimination even if it does not fully affect
all married couples. Such discrimination is unacceptable even in a
single instance.
Moreover, the main purpose of the act is to provide health
insurance to persons without employer-provided health insurance. The
basic point here is that the new subsidy system designed to fulfill that
purpose is highly discriminatory against married couples.
Finally, if Obamacare were enacted, the number of employers offering health insurance would decline over time.[3]
Therefore, the number of married couples who would eventually lose
employer-provided insurance—and face stark discrimination on the
non-group market under the provisions of the Senate bill—would
substantially increase in the long term.
Profound Bias Against Marriage
The Senate health care bill sends a clear message: Married
couples are second-class citizens. On the other hand, the bill
establishes cohabiters as a privileged special interest, quietly
channeling tens of thousands of dollars to them in preferential
government bonuses.
Offering couples massive financial rewards on the condition they
jettison their wedding vows, or decline to make them in the first place,
is absurd social policy. But that would be the established policy of
the U.S. government if Obamacare becomes law.
Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in the Domestic Policy Studies Department at The Heritage Foundation.
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