Whoops: Obamacare Provision Would Deny Low-Cost Health Care To Low-Income Families

Another one of those “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” moments, I guess.

A major provision of the healthcare reform law designed to prevent businesses from dropping coverage for their workers could inadvertently leave families without access to subsidized health insurance. The problem is a huge headache for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, because it could leave families unable to buy affordable health insurance when the healthcare law requires that everyone be insured starting in 2014. Some of the administration’s closest allies on healthcare reform warn this situation could dramatically undercut support for the law, which already is unpopular with many voters and contributed to Democrats losing the House in the 2010 midterm elections.

At issue is a so-called “firewall” in the law that denies subsidies to workers whose employers offer quality, affordable coverage…In calculating the bill’s cost last year, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) took the law to mean that employers and their families aren’t eligible for subsidies as long as the individual plan is affordable — regardless of the price of the family plan. This means the costs to an employee for covering his or her family could be too high to afford for many working families.?

In other words, rather than making health care coverage more affordable and accessible, Obamacare is making health care coverage more expensive and harder to get.

But at least it’ll only cost us billions in new taxes.