ObamaCare Discourages Marriage

Current Event

 

Published October 27, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Obama’s Health Care Law Penalizes Marriage, Analysts Say

A new wrinkle has surfaced in the implementation of the federal health care law that critics argue will impose a significant penalty on women and marriage.

The law includes generous subsidies for the uninsured so they can afford to buy coverage in the new insurance exchanges that are part of the legislation.

But several analysts told Congress Thursday the nature of the subsidies has an odd effect.

“The way this bill is structured, there are disincentives for women to marry and disincentives for women to work,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. “And for a bill that’s supposed to make Americans healthier, these disincentives are truly startling.”

Critics say that beginning in 2014, Americans will find it more advantageous to stay single than marry because it will be easier to afford health coverage.

Why? The new law provides generous subsidies for those without insurance so they can buy it on the new exchanges, but the subsidies are tied to one’s income level and there’s the rub.

The income measure for subsidy purposes are not based on individuals but rather on families. And that creates a perverse incentive.

“Two singles would each be able to earn $43,000 and still receive help to purchase health insurance, but if they got married and combined their earnings to $86,000, they would be far above the limit,” Furchtgott-Roth explained.

So those with that much income as a couple would lose the government subsidies and be on their own for thousands of dollars in health coverage.

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Federal subsidies vs. The Constitution and Marriage

Founding Document

The US Constitution: Tenth amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

According to James Madison in Federalist 45

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

To quote Thomas Jefferson:

“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

We the People:

Such legislation undermines social norms and the codependency between a child’s mother and father.  It displaces the dependency of the mother from the husband to the federal government; and those in power reap the benefit.  One thing is certain; they are not doing this “for the children”.

The founders viewed the nuclear family as an essential aspect of self-government.   Federal funding for such programs would have been unthinkable.  They wrote the tenth amendment to make the limitations of the federal government’s power clear enough that even a socialist could understand it.