Obamacare Premiums Not High Enough? Don���t Worry; the Health Insurance Tax is Coming Next Year

Forgotten about this?

Obamacare, which is already in a death spiral, fights to stay alive each year with higher and higher premiums.

Well, come 2018, as things stand right now, in addition to however much premiums are due to increase simply on the basis of the failing mechanism, they will go higher still. This is thanks to the Obamacare health insurance tax that���s always been lurking, but never (yet) implemented.

The health insurance tax has always been a component of the Affordable Care Act, but one that politicians have managed to keep at bay during the first years of the law.

The health insurance tax, or HIT, represents a direct tax on premiums, and would, as usual, be another government levy that hits small businesses and middle-class families squarely between the eyes. As if that���s not enough, the tax will make life tougher for those seniors on Medicare Advantage plans, as well as those Americans dependent on Medicaid.

Numbers-crunching by The Heritage Foundation estimates that insurance premiums will rise another two to three percent next year simply on the basis of the tax. According to the Congressional Budget Office, HIT will cost taxpayers $12.3 billion in 2018, and over $145 billion during the next decade.

Grover Norquist, writing in April about the tax over at The Hill, shared the National Federation of Independent Business���s estimate that HIT may well cost as many as 286,000 new jobs, and as much as $33 billion in lost sales to small business, through 2023.

Obamacare - the gift that keeps on giving.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large