"The middle class is now less than half of the U.S. population"

"Middle class Americans now comprise less than half, or 49.9%, of the nation’s population, down from 61% in 1971, according to a new Pew Research Center report. For Pew, middle class Americans live in households earning between two-thirds to two times the nation’s median income. In 2014, that ranged from $41,900 to $125,600 for a three-person household."

And if a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation is true, the squeeze on the middle class is about to get tighter. "That Obamacare penalty will be bigger than you think"

Households that opt to go without health insurance in 2016 are set to get hit with an average Obamacare fine of $969.

That is 47 percent higher than the average $661 penalty per uninsured household for this year, a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed Wednesday.

And households without insurance that earn too much to qualify for financial aid to buy Obamacare plans will pay an even larger fine for 2016 — an average of $1,450, versus the average of $1,177 for 2015.

Uninsured households that would qualify for Obamacare subsidies to help pay for coverage face an average fine of $738 — nearly double the $389 average for this year.

"It's a substantial increase," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, about the higher average fines.

Look before you leap, some people never learn

"A White House aide set off a stampede of liberal media criticism for Internet news pioneer Matt Drudge over Obamacare – but his critics don't seem to understand how small businesses pay taxes."

The brouhaha started when Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not 'getting covered'... I'M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX.”

Jesse Lee, the Director of Progressive Media at Barack Obama's White House, responded that that was a “Flat lie, no fee for previous year,” adding, “Scary how much influence he once had.”

Lee’s response to Drudge set off a firestorm in the liberal media, with many mainstream media and left-wing reporters countering him on Twitter and in their own articles to claim he does not have to pay Obamacare’s Individual Mandate tax until next year. The individual mandate went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, and most people paying their taxes right now are paying taxes for 2013.

“Dude, there's no penalty until next yr,” Sahil Kapur of the leftwing Talking Points Memo tweeted.

Kapur’s colleague at TPM Dylan Scott wrote a full story with a headline alleging Drudge was “probably lying.”

“Americans don't pay a penalty for not having health insurance until they file their 2014 taxes -- in 2015,” Scott wrote. “So either Drudge is lying or he paid a huge penalty a year earlier than he needed to.”

“Penalty isn't collected until 2015,” Sam Baker of National Journal tweeted at Drudge.

The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young wrote a full article in which he described Drudge’s tweet as “weird” and a “little head-scratching” because the Obamacare tax does not kick in until the 2014 tax year.

Drudge indicated in his followup tweets that since he is self-employed as the proprietor of The Drudge Report, he files as a small business. According to the IRS’s website for self-employed individuals, they are required to pay taxes quarterly.

“As a self-employed individual, generally you are required to file an annual return and pay estimated tax quarterly,” the IRS website reads.

So, when they file and pay those 2014 first quarter taxes, such individuals have to pay the Obamacare Individual Mandate tax if they opted to not have health insurance—like Drudge just did. read more

All they had to do was check with a CPA or whatever. Why didn't they do that? and instead risk a humiliating exposing, at the hands of an internets mega force - Matt Drudge. I love it.

Do you think Drudge set out to bait them?

"Notes Reveal Chaotic White House Talks on Health Care Site"

“There’s been a crisis of confidence created in the dysfunctional nature of the website, the canceling of policies and sticker shock from some people,” said Ms. Mikulski, a strong supporter of the 2010 health care law."

The notes indicate that by Oct. 8, one week after the exchange opened, administration officials had begun to realize that its problems were widespread and could not be easily fixed. No sooner was one problem solved than others popped up. The documents show that officials were focused on addressing individual bugs, rather than the larger issue: The website was not working properly from Day 1.

NYT Editorial: "Insurance Policies Not Worth Keeping"

The following three paragraphs were merrily selected from yesterday's bitterly clinging NYT Editorial.

Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that. By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year. So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people who hold these substandard policies. (At issue here are not the 149 million people covered by employer plans, but the 10 million to 12 million people who buy policies directly on the individual market.)

This overblown controversy has also obscured the crux of what health care reform is trying to do, which is to guarantee that everyone can buy insurance without being turned away or charged exorbitant rates for pre-existing conditions and that everyone can receive benefits that really protect them against financial or medical disaster, not illusory benefits that prove inadequate when a crisis strikes.

Some conservative groups, eager to cripple the individual market by deterring enrollment, are urging consumers not to take out insurance and to instead pay the fine, which is cheaper than the cost of insurance but hardly negligible. For individuals, it starts at $95 or 1 percent of applicable yearly income in 2014, whichever is higher, and rises to $695 or 2.5 percent of applicable income in 2016. But why pay the penalty and get nothing when you can pay a reasonable fee and get a good policy?

NYT Editorial

"Opt-Out Obamacare Penalty Can't Be Enforced -- Unless You Get a Tax Refund"

RUSH: For those of us who take as long as we can to pay our taxes, October 15th was the extension filing date for 2012, and I dutifully was in there. My accountant, who is almost afraid to be my accountant because he thinks he's gonna get targeted, too, just 'cause his name's on my return, he said, "Look, you may not know this, but you keep talking about these Obamacare fines if you don't buy a policy...

... [H]e said to me that, according to the law, the only way that the government can collect the fine or penalty for you not buying insurance is if you are owed a tax refund. If you do not owe a tax refund, they cannot go into your bank account or anywhere else and get that money. Now, the sad thing is that most people file their taxes to get a refund 'cause they think they're screwing the government, and they're not. You're giving the government all that money all that year...

Therefore, the only way that they can collect the penalty or the fine is by taking money from your refund. If you are not owed a refund, they cannot get money from you. They can't issue a lien. They can't garnish your wages. They can't use any of the normal procedures available to them if you owe them money, even though the Supreme Court has said it's a tax...

... [I]f you structure your taxes so that you do not get a refund, you do not have to buy insurance and you do not have to pay a fine 'cause they can't collect it from you if you don't have a refund due. And that is just another nail in the coffin of Obamacare imploding on itself.

Rush Limbaugh via Drudge Tweet