The Affordable Care Act [Section 1401 36(B)(c)(2)(C)(i)] you’ll find that for employer sponsored minimum essential coverage, that coverage must be affordable and will not be affordable if “the employee’s required contribution (within the meaning of section 5000A(e)(1)(B)) with respect to the plan exceeds 9.8 percent of the applicable taxpayer’s household income.”
At irs.gov, “Request for Comments on Health Coverage Affordability Safe Harbor for Employees (Section 4980H)” you can read that “Coverage under an employer-sponsored plan is affordable to a particular employee if the employee’s required contribution…does not exceed 9.5 percent of the employee’s household income for the taxable year.”
This limit only applies to the employee, not the employee’s spouse or other dependents. The sky’s the limit on those expenses. With the significance of health insurance expenses, it may make financial sense for couples to divorce.
The next sentence goes on, that for the purposes of Section 140136(B)(c)(2)(C)(i) “Household income for this purpose is defined as the modified adjusted gross income of the employee and any members of the employee’s family who are required to file an income tax return.”
Divorce means that a parent with dependent children would likely qualify for Medicaid and other government insurance programs for parents and children with little to no income. It would also benefit the working spouse because since health benefits cannot exceed 9.5 percent of his or her household income, by reducing the household income to their own, alone, they’ll reach that threshold sooner.
While distasteful, the numbers under Obamacare are likely to become too significant to ignore, as married couples watch their income dwindle in the face of Obamacare and rising insurance and healthcare costs. [Of course, you should look into all the implications of taking such a drastic step, and this article intends to highlight a likely result of Obamacare, fewer marriages and more divorces.]
Like employers sacrificing hiring American workers, cutting down on hours offered workers, or moving jobs offshore, like the rich hiding money offshore, like the President and other politicians arguing for drastically reducing Medicare benefits or imposing an individual mandate, couples too are going to have to make the choice of values or money, and there may be no reasonable way of managing the new world without divorcing, making children and one parent eligible for benefits that will likely save the “family” thousands of dollars each year.
Ultimately, the double-talk comes down to the real world, and Obamacare was and is just that, 1,000 pages of doubletalk, giving with one grinning politician’s hand while taking away more with the other.
For married couples married 10 years, such divorce will not impact the lower-earning spouse from collecting on the higher-earning spouse’s social security, or the couple can remarry once everyone gets older.
It would be interesting to hear arguments of from bickering legislators regarding how there is NOT a marriage/family penalty built into Obamacare by these provisions and the plans for their implementation.
