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How Much Will Obamacare Cost You?
The federal health care overhaul will be paid for with spending cuts and an estimated $420 billion in new taxes. How much of that $420 billion will come out of your pocket? The Tax Foundation’s new Health Care Tax calculator has the answer.
The calculator covers nine new taxes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—the Cadillac tax on generous policies, the 10 percent tanning tax, the tax on HSA disbursements, the medical devices tax and more—some of which don’t kick in until 2018.
The calculator provides your total tax burden along with the burden for each individual tax. But that’s not the total cost of the health care law. Creator Nick Kasprak explains;
. . .the impact of the individual and employer mandates, which are designed to change consumer behavior rather than raise revenue, need to be considered in addition to direct tax costs, as well as spending cuts to Medicare Advantage.
In other words, your calculated tax burden doesn’t account for a variety of unintended consequences, such as an increase in premiums thanks to new mandates or the rise in Medicaid enrollment. While we now know what is in the bill, the full cost of PPACA is still unknown.