Now when you file taxes you will be asked if you have health insurance. This is how they know who to fine for not buying into Obamacare.

Obamacare starting to look more and more like a tax eh?

i heard spreading tinfoil generously around the head helps a lot. coat hangers attached to the foil have shown positive results, as well.

tax or not people have healthcare now. how bad is that. better than spending it on wars, domestic and foreign.

Yes, it is a tax. Why are we forced to pay for something we dont want or need. The govt is not giving anything away here. We are forced to buy something that is absolutely useless.

This is exactly what the govt is doing - spending the money on more wars because the money we are forced to pay or fined only goes to war - it certainly does not go to healthcare.

Example - aperson pays for 1 year of healthcare. They did not need or use any services so they paid for absolutely nothing. The money was taken, spend by the govt and the person received no services.

Some people are so blind that they think the govt does no wrong. All they do is for the benefit of its people - NOT!

Campo has a point about paying US income tax these days - it might be considered unethical to do so. Note the military budget, often referred to as the 'defense' budget.

20million untinfoiled americans,with (now) healthcare benefits may disagree.

you know how insurance works, right?
i guess you are equally upset about paying you car insurance?

why you should pay something,that 'YOU'don't want?

So that other people, -less fortunate than you,-have the chance to enjoy healthcare benefits.
it's a community deed. i am teaching community to my 2nd graders. they understand the concept.

but i assume that wasn't an actual question, in the first place.

but as always, it only makes sense,if you accept that an opinion other than your own,is acceptabel.

damn i took the bait.....my bad!

@alien
nobody likes taxes.

not all taxes are used for military/defense. but maybe i am just naive. lol

but if there is something GOOD to pay taxes for, it for sure is, that people and businesses can afford it now.

all the crap that people waste their money on, -i dunno, maybe i am spoiled but,- health insurance seems the most reasonable.

The IRS collects great statistics on tax collection. The AVERAGE individual tax collected on the 146 million tax returns filed is about USD 10k. The AVERAGE corporate tax collected on about 2 million corporate filers is about USD 140k.

Bear in mind, this is ONLY federal tax. It doesn't include state and local taxes (such as property taxes, vehicle taxes, gasoline taxes, luxury taxes, Obamacare, and Californian's favorite SALES taxes).

Based on the above numbers, the US gov roughly collects about USD 2 trillion in taxes and spends about USD 8 trillion per year (numbers from gao.gov 2014).

Politicians and economists keep trying to tell me deficit spending is a good idea - but sounds more like a pyramid scheme with an economic firestorm bubble burst waiting to happen. All we need is a few bad years...and POP, POOF!

On the other hand, the EU is discussing an EU wide monetary stimulus of about EU 500 billion. The US gov bailed out it's banks and credit insurance companies (aka AIG) to the tune of USD 800 billion+ (that we know about), to avert a total financial meltdown...actually, to cover US bank corruption, greed, and general lack of ethics and social responsibility...all ostensibly supported by our politicians over a period of 20 years (since the original S&L crisis).

Moving right along, the general tax breakdown is at this link:
www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Tax-Stats-at-a-Glance

The US government (I think via the GAO or General Accounting Office) also maintains general statistics on where the major portions of the US budget goes - which doesn't include illicit NSA/CIA revenues, such as covert arms and drug sales, etc.

The REALLY BIG ticket items from 2010 are as follows:

MANDATORY ITEMS (BY LAW)
$695 billion – Social Security
$571 billion – Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
$453 billion – Medicare
$290 billion – Medicaid
$164 billion – Interest on National Debt

DISCRETIONARY SPENDING
$663.7 billion – Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)

If you want to see a rather detailed budgetary pie chart - check out wikipedia's pie chart from 2010 here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

or if you just want to see the BIG PIE chart for 2010 - the link is here:
upload.wikimedia.org/[...]

Enjoy in all it's "gory"...(pun intended)

@Tuna: I'm not objecting to state health in principle - far from it, US health system is ridiculous in general compared to almost anywhere in Europe - I just don't know how Obamacare - my comment was about not providing neo-imperialists with more guns.

@Alien: Where do you get : "US health system is ridiculous in general"? Do you have any personl experience with the US health system? Have you ever even been to the US? I suspect you just had a 五毛 moment.

The US ACA, Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, is a tax and a scheme for redistribution of wealth. Criticism of The US heath care system is not the quality and availability of care but how and who was paying for it. 90% of Americans had health insurance but that market insurance system was torn apart in hopes of providing insurance for the uninsured 10%. Even Obama stated that the total cost of insurance would go up. Young healthy persons are paying more, being taxed, so old sickly farts like me pay nothing. Last year, after returning to the US with no health insurance, I was treated for 65 days as an in-patient, given a wheelchair and a prosthetic brace and other stuff to take home. Then I received ten weeks in home therapy. Total cost, to me, of my stay and treatment was ZERO, nada, nothing. Not even五毛!