‘Affordable’ Care: $1 Pay Hike Costs Middle-Class Family $9,355 Hike in Premiums

The Kaiser Family Foundation maintains an online “Subsidy Calculator”  to give individuals and families an idea of how much their health  insurance will cost under Obamacare and how much of a federal subsidy  they may get—or not get—to help pay for it.

Because the federal government has not yet published the Federal  Poverty Level numbers for 2014, the calculator uses the FPL numbers for  2013. This year, the FPL for a family of five (a mom, a dad, and three  children) is $27,570. Four hundred percent of FPL for a family of five  is $110,280.

That means that, under Obamacare’s health-insurance subsidy rule, a  family of five that earns $110,280 in a year, and buys health-insurance  on the government-run exchange, will have their premiums capped at 9.5  percent of their income (if they buy the second-lowest costing “Silver”  plan or a cheaper plan).

But if the mom in this family gets a 50-cent raise and dad gets a  50-cent raise, too—so that their adjusted gross household income  increases by a combined $1 (to $110,281)—the family will no longer have a cap  on the percentage of their income they must pay for health-insurance  premiums.

So, what will that $1 increase in household income cost them?

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