Are You Ready for Obama Care?

Well, I consider SS to be merely getting back a portion of what you put into the system. Medicare is different.


?? .. Medicare is paid from your Social Security account.
From Medicare website:

Medicare is funded by the Social Security Administration. Which means it's funded by taxpayers: We all pay 1.45% of our earnings into FICA - Federal Insurance Contributions Act, if you're into deciphering acronyms - which go toward Medicare. Employers pay another 1.45%, bringing the total to 2.9%. (If you're self-employed, you must cough up the entire 2.9%.) The Medicare deduction on your paycheck might say FICA-HI. The HI refers to Health Insurance, and it's your premium cost for all Medicare coverage.
While the portion of our FICA taxes that cover payments into the Social Security system are levied only on the first $106,800 in earnings for 2010, the Medicare tax is levied on every penny you earn.
 

This is related to the last year that I was working, and my paychecks, and my pay never came close to the $106,800 figure...

FICA refers to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, and it covers taxes on payroll for both Social Security and Medicare. Social Security taxes are only paid on the first $106,800 of annual earnings. There is no earnings limitation on Medicare taxes. The tax rate in 2009 was 6.2 percent for Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare.

From the social security.gov site...

When you have wages or self-employment income covered by Social Security, you pay Social Security taxes each year up to a maximum amount set by law.

For 2013, you will pay Social Security taxes on income below $113,700.

You must pay Medicare taxes on all income.

Also, beginning in 2013 you must pay 0.9 percent more in Medicare taxes on earned individual income of more than $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly). The tax rates shown below do not include the 0.9 percent:


  • Employees — the Social Security tax rate is 6.2 percent on income under $113,700 through the end of 2013. The Medicare tax rate is 1.45 percent of all income;
 
?? .. Medicare is paid from your Social Security account.
From Medicare website:

Pshhh ... shows how much I know about the government. :(

I don't plan to ever collect either one, so I never took the time to learn the workings of the system. :eek:

And thank you also, Sea - as Sherlock Holmes once said, "Now that I know it I shall do my best to forget it". ;)
 

Pshhh ... shows how much I know about the government. :(

Yeah .. Medicare and Medicaid are two very different animals.

Medicare is money YOU pay in ... Medicaid is the government hand-out to the poor...

I didn't know much about Medicare or Social Security until I turned 65 and started collecting. .. The first year on Social Security I didn't sign up for Medicare at all. I thought, heck, I don't need this medical insurance, I'm very healthy, why bother having them take money from me for nothing!..
Second year, everyone convinced me that it's stupid not to have it 'just in case' ... so I grudgingly signed up ...
Well, Social Security came back at me with GOTCHA!! ... $10 extra dollars per month out of SS to make up for not signing on originally with Medicare. :mad: ... so that was that lesson.


Also, during the government shut-down ... and the talk about who should get paid and who shouldn't ...
Well, SS checks HAD to go out, right? ... think they were worried about some old people starving or something . .... NAH.
They wanted the Medicare money pulled from SS for their own interests. .. I guess they can't get to it legally otherwise. .. :confused:
 
I've heard all this talk about SS and/or going broke. Well, that wouldn't be happening if they hadn't been dipping into the pot for their own causes...that money was supposed to be set aside and not used for anything else. Good luck with that one. :mad:
 
Sorry, but Obamacare will still leave millions without insurance in this country...even if they ever get the web site working so those who want/need/can afford the so-called Affordable Care Act can sign up. This program is a disaster and needs to be delayed/repealed/deleted, etc. No I do not think a family should lose everthing they have because of an illness or accident; no I don't think pre-existing conditions should be reason to deny coverage...yes there is much to fix, but this plan is riddled with things which should scare Americans. It gives the government too much power, too much input into our lives. They couldn't build a web site for crying-out-loud, how can they handle our health insurance. The premium prices are high, the deductibles are outrageous. How they ever came up with the title "Affordable..." is beyond me. Oh yeah, I remember, they think the American people are stupid...and sometimes we are!
 
It's not that insane, IMO. Our Health Insurance system in the US is broken, someone had to get off their duff and make an attempt to fix it. My cost for insurance was going up higher in increasing and obscene amounts on a yearly basis. That's not fair that they leach all my lifetime hard earned savings for retirement, just to line their own pockets. I don't love Obama, but I have to give him credit for making a move. What he failed on, and should be ashamed of was, that crappy website that people have to deal with. Obamacare is law, and if the state leaders gave a crap about the people living in their states, they would have approved individual state sites to make it easy for the residents to enroll...but no, they had to throw their hissy fits because they didn't get their way, and as usual, the people suffer.

Easy for the others to play Monday morning quarterback and slam everything about Obamacare, but they brought no solutions themselves to the table. Also, those who are so much against Obamacare (or Obama), need to keep in mind that thanks to the Affordable Care Act, health care providers can no longer just drop someone's policy for no reason, they can no longer deny somebody coverage because they have a pre-existing condition, and now there is no annual or life-time limits on the coverage as before, etc. For someone with a serious medical condition, that means a lot.

The whole point of this Obamacare was to make affordable health insurance available to everyone in the US. People cry that we are paying for those who get tax credits in the new plan, but we paid for all of those people who had no insurance at all anyway, whenever they showed up in the emergency room, at the doctors or the hospitals. In my opinion, we should just go to the Universal Health Care System that all the other civilized countries have, and are quite happy with. When the anti-Obamacare (Obama) folks cite some example of someone in Canada waiting months for an operation, they are just jumping on examples and exaggerating them to try to make their case. We have relatives in Finland that are very pleased with the system, and know some folks from Canada that have absolutely no complaints.

I'm not very political at all, but I'm a registered independent, and will vote for the lesser of the two evils running for president. I won't throw out my vote on a third party candidate. Honestly, both the republicans and democrats disgust me. Both parties have let this great nation swirl its way down the toilet, instead of using their power and money to make it flourish. They fight amongst each other like a bunch of spoiled brats, and neither party is doing what they're supposed to do, which is serve the American citizens and give a damn about the citizens that live here.

Barack Obama is president, the Affordable Care Act is law, people need to just accept that, get over it, and move on. :rolleyes:

Thanks, SeaBreeze, for speaking the truth about Obamacare, among a sea of myths and negativity.

On the Universal Health Care or Single Pay, I think Vermont just voted this in, there is a clause in the ACA that the individual states can do this, if you remember, in the start up planning of the ACA, this was turned down by the Republicans and a few Democrats, so maybe other states will follow.

On the two parties being the same....I have to disagree there, when you start looking at the record of how each party votes, you'll see the difference, Democrats invariably will vote for the good of the people and the country as a whole, are they perfect...no...I agree there are many flaws with both parties, but I'll stand with Democrats, their record speaks for me.
 
I had mentioned a nurse visiting us (post #72 on this thread) to see how we were doing. Well, she came today, and now I can see where these type of home visits might make it easier to voice concerns, and bring attention to things we might need to see the doctor for later on.
She gave us a better checkup than we usually get at the annual physical; other than taking blood, of course. Asked a lot of questions, and listened to what concerns we had. She took a list of all our medicines, and couldn't believe we each take only one (crossing fingers, here), and I gave her a list of all the supplements we take as well....we thought the dr had all of this already, but she wrote it all down again, for whatever reason.

Then she wanted to know about a living will; we do have a family trust. Also if we could manage the cleaning, laundry, etc, without help (knew that one was coming). They could find someone to come in occasionally to assist us if need be.

While it's nice to know we could get help if we needed it, I guess I don't like the whole idea of the ins. co. checking everything out - but for some who are alone, this could be a godsend, and who knows; in the future we may be needing it.
 
In the last two weeks alone we have a faux Rose Garden Obama Care 'success' celebration. The government bureaucrat in charge resigns after the fact a day late and dollar short. And then yet another faux claim of success with the president himself bragging about success at 8 million enrollees. But that 8 million doesn't stand up to the 50 million uninsured they bantied about to drum up fear and sympathy for Obama Care. How is reducing the uninsured by 20% over 5 years a success???
 
Well, the states whose representatives allowed state websites to sign up don't have that problem. Where I live we had our own state site that didn't have all the issues of the big main one. Unfortunately, from what I heard, some state representatives were so much against the thought of the Affordable Care Act, that they denied their citizens of an individual state site for easy sign up. The average joe always suffers in the end with decisions like this, from biased politicians.
 

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