The price of ACA

It's like 3 in the morning and I cannot sleep. For days, maybe even weeks I've been steaming at the ACA or "Obamacare" tax reform that has started this year. This bill is so fucked up, from start to finish, that the only people who benefit from it are the government trolls giving great ratings and those who couldn't afford insurance before.

There really is no one way for me to take on ACA without having about 17 different topics on it. So I'll just rant away on how shitty the whole program is.

For instance, myself. I spent my time in the military, got hurt and had I done nothing I would have benefited from the "pre-existing" condition portion of the ACA. Unfortunately, getting hurt didn't stop me from trying to better myself post military. I went on to get my bachelors degree in accounting and found myself a decent job with benefits, and many more incentives that the ACA is not designed for.

Recently, I looked at what the ACA had to offer and I found startling results. Keep in mind that I don't have the time or necessary resources to conduct a peer reviewed study for which I can solidify this blog. What I do have is about 10 case samples of people who volunteered their information.

For instance, I asked about 5 couples what they made in a year. I know most of them are low income, so each family made $30k or less per year. Obviously they do not have jobs with ACA minimum insurances, so their options are to take what their employers give them and cover the rest with the exchanges. Or they can deny what their employer gives them, and risk losing money saving subsidies at the exchanges. Luckily all of these people have pro-created so they really didn't risk anything. They all marked that they had insurance through ACA, and they all paid very little in taxes.

Take my family for instance. My household income was just shy of $125k last year. Neither my spouse nor myself qualify for ACA because we both have employer sponsored insurance. We found ourselves in another tax bracket for ACA, but in a totally different bracket for income.

Why? Because of the 5 couples I talked about above, all of them are in the $0-$50 a month category for insurance under ACA. Almost all of them have food stamps, and nearly all of them pay the majority of their expenses as child care.
I don't have food stamps. I pay a shit load for child care, but I still budget my money to have enough to pay all of my bills.

However this year I noticed something really interesting happening. What was once a credit in the tax code is now cash waiting to be distributed. For these families who paid nearly nothing in taxes, were given incredible subsidies paid for by my IRS tax bracket, and enjoyed eating off of other people's good fortunes they get high amounts of money back.

I'm not talking about little sums. I'm talking between $6 and $15k. That never used to happen. That's because back in the day if you took food stamps, a portion was racked out of your tax return to offset what was given to you. Now it's free money, well for the person using foodstamps.
I on the other hand had the fortune of paying large amounts in taxes. Then when I filed my return, I found that I owed even more. Infact, I didn't get a return.
I have a wife, two kids, a home and a stable job. I help make serious strides in my workplace and contribute to society by helping others in need. Yet when a break would be nice, I pay for it.

So how is the ACA fair? Well truth be told, it's not. It allows the formerly non-insured to free load off of the backs of those making decent money. It also changed the term "middle class" by making those who earn less than $40k for a family per year actual middle class. Yet the IRS moved to charge these same families LESS than what they consider "upper middle class". The upper middle class is now lumped from $75k to $225k per year. They pay for all those making $40k and less.

Why did they do this? The majority of the people in this "upper middle class" segment are between 28 and 45, are educated and have the means to budget their money. They make smart financial decisions based on what they can actually afford (by using a budget), and at tax season time they are less likely to spend thousands due from a tax return on a vacation. Most would actually pay down bills which would keep them in the same bracket, but shield their money. So this is why the IRS targets this group. Because anyone in this group can budget for a vacation. They don't need a once a year boost to aim for a lifestyle of luxury for a whole week. They can budget from it. So if they charge each of us between $400 to $2,000 at tax time, they can cover the ACA budget without pissing off the people who wrote the bill.

Problem 1: Most people in my category have student loads to pay for. This is because they wanted to better themselves. Less than 25% of the lower middle class has an associates degree. The vast majority already have, or will soon see student loan forgiveness.

Problem 2: We don't live in a country that provides raw goods to the world anymore. We are a service oriented country. To provide a service, you often don't have anything tangible to offer. You best offer is advice, or answers to complex questions. The lower middle class though, they have gone from working in factories to taking jobs at retail stores. They don't unionize here because the wages are so low. In return they get thousands in tax breaks.

Problem 3: As we begin to give less to the world, we start to take. Taking costs a shitload more than giving. Only recently have the oil prices dropped so low that OPEC realizes it's largest consumer is within 20 years of being energy independent. The problem is, once foreign oil is not relied upon anymore, our oil prices will dip to pre 9/11 levels. All these oil jobs will go away. Entire fields will be shut down, and one of the last true gritty middle class jobs will go away. Then we will be back on foreign oil, this time with more people taking welfare assistance.

Conclusion: Why the hell should I work so hard to have a nice home and raise my family in a nice place when I have to pay for the vacations and dreams of those who wish to work for so less? Why should the upper class be exempt from the terror that is driving a steel rod through the middle class? The real answer is that we are all on the Titanic (not really). The upper class doesn't want to see the 2nd class passengers (people like me), and they sure as hell don't want to see 3rd class passengers. They don't want to share anything, including the problems of the middle class. To them we are all one, but unfortunately less than 50% of the middle class is paying for nearly 85% of the debt made by them. Not to mention, it's this second class of people like me who have to work for the upper class to shield them from paying for the 3rd class.

This ship won't sink though, not at least entirely. In this case the 2nd class passengers will drown, while the 3rd class passengers won't realize that the water rushing in is going to collapse the entire boat. All while the 1st class boards another ship, watching the 2nd and 3rd class passengers take what was left of a beautiful upper deck.

I don't think we are in this together. I think we are torn apart.