By W.F. PRICE
The Supremes have set the stage for the full implementation of Obamacare, and yet people are not fully aware of the consequences of this enormous, bloated bill.
A provision of Obamacare that divorced fathers ought to pay close attention to is the extension of “dependent children” to age 26 (from Cornell’s law blog):
Grandfathered Health Plans
Under the Affordable Care Act, current health plans that existed at the time the Act was signed were “grandfathered” into the Act. This was meant to allow people to maintain the insurance coverage they already possessed. Under the Act, grandfathered health plans are exempted from certain requirements that the Act imposed. For example, grandfathered health plans are not required to impose limits on out-of-pocket costs for their users. New plans are required to provide their participants with “essential health benefits,” as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services; grandfathered health plans are not subject to these requirements. However, certain requirements do apply alike to the new plans and the grandfathered health plans. These include extending the age of dependent children to age 26. Also, both types of plan are prohibited from placing a monetary limit on lifetime coverage.
Although there’s nothing wrong with fathers helping out adult children, the problem here is that the if the custodial parent (overwhelmingly the mother) continues to claim the child as a dependent, guess who gets the checks?
This will simply incentivize mothers to keep children “dependent” as long as possible, possibly through having them go to school beyond what’s necessary, take superfluous classes, etc.
The days when child support ended at 18 are long over. Now, women are entitled to payments from babydaddy for a full third (or more) of his natural life, and more than half of his working life.
Obamacare is indeed a tax, and guess who’s going to be footing most of the bill?