Obamacare hurting low and middle income people the most

Washington Free Beacon:

The majority of households paying the Obamacare penalty in 2015 were low- and middle-income households, according to the most recent data from the Internal Revenue Service.

The Affordable Care Act individual mandate requires that Americans pay the individual shared responsibility payment, otherwise known as a penalty or a tax, if a household or individual fails to have health care coverage.

There were 6,665,480 households who chose to pay the Obamacare penalty in that year rather than signing up for Affordable Care Act coverage. They paid a total of $3,079,255,000.

Of the 6.7 million households who chose to pay a penalty, 37 percent—2.5 million households—earned a salary less than $25,000 per year. There were 5.2 million households that earned a salary less than $50,000 per year who decided to pay the penalty, which totaled 79 percent of households paying the penalty. Finally, 92 percent of the households—6.1 million households—paid the penalty and earned less than $75,000 a year.

The penalties have increased every year since the Affordable Care Act was implemented. In 2014, the penalty totaled a flat fee of $95 or 1 percent of income above the filing threshold. In 2015, the penalty increased to a flat fee of $325 or 2 percent of a household's income, whichever one was higher. In 2016 and 2017, the penalties increased even higher to a flat fee of $695 or 2.5 percent of gross income.
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This tells you just how worthless Obamacare is for low-income families who do not qualify for Medicaid.  They are faced with exorbitant premiums, and then get nothing for it unless they have a catastrophic healthcare problem because the deductibles are so high.

Michelle Malkin is now dealing with the fourth Obamacare plan that is going away.

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Speaking of Affordable Care Act whoppers, so much for "affordable." Our current deductible is $6,550 per person; $13,100 for our family of four. Assuming we can find a new plan at the bottom of the individual market barrel, our current monthly premium, $944.86, will rise to more than $1,300 a month.
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This isn't a "market correction." It's a government catastrophe. Premiums for individual health plans in Virginia are set to skyrocket nearly 60 percent in 2018. In New Hampshire, those rates will rise 52 percent. In South Carolina, individual market consumers will face an average 31.3 percent hike. In Tennessee, they'll see rates jump between 20-40 percent.
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Why are liberals still defending this crap?   And why are a half-dozen Republicans in teh Senate blocking a fix to this disaster?

Is it any wonder that people are paying the tax rather than policies of limited worth?