Obama’s War on the Middle Class

All throughout Obama’s campaigns (all 5 years of them) he has been touting the fact that he supports and understands the middle class while his opponent (whoever it happened to be at the time) didn’t.  He promised to “never” raise taxes on the middle class and tried to scare Americans into believing that if his opponent won – their taxes would be raised and they would have their standard of living destroyed.  Unfortunately, many Americans bought his well-worn lies and voted him into office….twice.

Fast-forward to 2013 and we see just how much of a lie President Obama was selling.  First came the Social Security tax hike–a big hit to working class Americans, many who are living pay-check to pay-check.  Then came the IRS calculations on Obamacare health insurance premiums.  The cheapest health-insurance plan that the IRS calculates will be available to a family of five will be $20,000 a year.  A staggering number by anyone’s calculations and that is the cheapest plan.  Who knows how much the most expensive plan, or the “Platinum Plan” as they like to call it, would cost the average family.  In this same report they also listed the “penalty” for not having insurance in any of the 12 preceding months.  The penalty, or more appropriately the tax, would be $2,085 or 2.5% of a family’s taxable income – whichever is more.  

Now depending on whom you ask, the average middle class family earns between $35,000 and $110,000 per year.  If you average those numbers out it comes to approximately $72,500 and if a family earning that amount were required to pay the $20,000 premium – it would be 27.5% of their total gross income.  However, thanks to our generous government, the average middle class family would only be required to pay $6,200 (for a family of 5 – $6,900 for a family of 4) or 8.5% of their total gross income on health insurance premiums after the government subsidized the remaining $13,800.

This premium is for the Bronze Plan, which according to the Kaiser Foundation would cover approximately 60% of your total medical bills—until your family reaches the out-of-pocket maximum.  So until a family meets the “maximum”, which would be approximately $7,250, the average family would be responsible for 40% of their total medical bills.   Very few private insurance companies offer such low coverage unless it is the cut-rate value plan.

Even with the subsidy and low coverage, if you add in federal taxes which are 15-25% of middle class families incomes, another 41% for housing costs (including utilities), 13.3% on food (and that number is expected to rise substantially in 2013), 17% for transportation expenses (which has gone up dramatically thanks to gas prices doubling under President Obama), 3% on childcare and educational expenses. The average American family could end up spending 2.8% more than their income each year on essentials – no non-essentials included and I have even excluded some essentials such as health insurance co-pays/deductibles, clothing, and state taxes. Yep, that sounds like a government idea to me–force Americans to pay more than they earn.

Now some of you might say, “Well $6,200 doesn’t sound too bad for a family of 4 or 5 to buy health insurance.”  For a family that is already buying their own health insurance, you might be right.  However, most families don’t buy their own insurance and what is happening is that many businesses, especially small businesses, are being hit with huge increases in their insurance premiums and are choosing to drop their health insurance plans rather than pay the astronomical premium increases.  So what happens to the employees who have been used to free or drastically reduced health care being offered by their employers (which is already predicted to happen to 7 million US workers)? Suddenly these employees will be hit with the high health insurance premiums and will be faced with the decision of whether to risk forgoing insurance altogether and paying a fine, or paying for health insurance they can’t afford.

What’s worse is that with all of the new regulations and requirements, private insurances premiums will continue to skyrocket and many people will be forced to buy into government exchanges and take government handouts.  The more people that buy into these exchanges the greater the burden will become on the American taxpayer.  With just one family, I pointed out that the government would be subsidizing $13,800 of their health insurance premium—for one family.  That’s $13,800 of new debt that will be passed on to our children and grandchildren.  Now, take that $13,800 and multiply it by a million or 5 million or 20 million–adding up and going up year after year after year after year.  It’s a grim picture for the future of America.

Obama never has been and never will be the champion of the middle class.  Not only has he raised taxes on the middle class, he is forcing Americans to purchase insurance they can’t afford, and creating a hostile business environment where the costs of goods and services essential to every American household are rising faster and faster each day. He has fooled many Americans into believing that health care for all is a good idea and fairness for all is a good idea, but what he is doing instead is forcing us all to be indebted to the American government and to simply become another one of his legions, on our knees begging for the all-powerful government to save us from our despair.