Obamacare: Amends Internal Revenue Code: Tax Penalty Without Qualifying Health Insurance

Obamacare legislation amends the Internal Revenue Code to apply a tax penalty for individuals who cannot prove that they are covered by qualifying health insurance.

It also establishes a Medical Advisory Council to determine the “amount, duration, and scope” of the items and services that must be included as “essential health care benefits” in a plan that qualifies for subsidies.

The costs was estimated at 1+ trillion dollars at the end of June 2009 and covered only about 30 million people.  But the plan was liberated over the July 4th holiday.

The costs are now 611 billion dollars with total coverage – whatever that means.

Critics say the revamped Kennedy Health Care “Reform” Plan  does not account for Medicaid coverage – which is crushing state budgets.

Additional provisions include:

• Expand Medicaid to 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
• Require health insurers to accept every employer and individual in the state for coverage.
• Require health insurance providers to report to the government how premiums are spent.
• Ban annual or lifetime limits on coverage.
• Establish committee boards, called Affordable Health Benefit Gateways, in each state to certify and inform residents about insurance plans.
• Extend dependent coverage so citizens may be covered on their parents’ insurance until they are 26 years old.

Follow the Obamacare Money Trail: The Other K Street

Michelle Malkin connected the Obamacare Follow the Money dots in a June 24 column:

If you believe the White House, there are 30 million Americans who support a government health care takeover. But if you look at the funding behind the Obamacare Astroturf campaign, it’s the same few Leftist billionaires, union bosses, and partisan community organizers pushing the socialized medicine agenda. Let’s connect the dots.

On Thursday, a national “grass-roots” coalition called “Health Care for America Now (HCAN)” will march on Capitol Hill to demand universal health care. The ground troops won’t have to march very far. HCAN, you see, is no heartland network. It is headquartered at 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C. – smack dab in the middle of Beltway lobby land.

In fact, 1825 K Street is Ground Zero for a plethora of “progressive” groups subsidized by anti-war, anti-Republican, Big Nanny special interests. Around Washington, the office complex is known as “The Other K Street.”

Why do they want Obamacare? An internal ACORN memo I obtained from August 2008 …  outlines the ACORN/HCAN partnership and strategy of opposing any programs that rely on “unregulated private insurance” – and then parlaying political victory on government-run health care “to move our ACORN agenda (or at least part of it) with key electeds that we might otherwise not be able to pull off.”

The objective, in other words, is to piggyback and exploit Obamacare to improve and protect their political health. The “grass-roots” movement is not about representing Main Street. It’s about peddling influence and power on 1825 K Street.

Michelle Malkin: Who’s funding the Obamacare Astroturf campaign?