some people gonna find they gotta pay the tax and still make too much per year to qualify for Medicaid, yet make too little to realistically afford private insurance?

"Or are some people gonna find they gotta pay the tax and still make too much per year to qualify for Medicaid, yet make too little to realistically afford private insurance?"

The ACA will make all legal residents under the age of 65 eligible for Medicaid if their family income is less than 133 percent of the federal poverty line. Low-wage workers with family incomes above 100 percent of the poverty line and whose employers don't provide insurance (or provide insurance that is deemed too expensive by ACA criteria) will be eligible to receive a federal subsidy to buy private insurance through a health exchange, as long as their family income is less than 400 percent of the poverty line.

If your boss cancels your insurance plan, you will then be able to participate in the famous "exchanges" to find your own insurance plan.  Depending on your income, the gummint will pay a pretty good chunk of the premiums for you.

"Or are some people gonna find they gotta pay the tax and still make too much per year to qualify for Medicaid, yet make too little to realistically afford private insurance?"  Yes, but most people with income just over Medicaid eligibility will find the subsidized premiums cost them less than the tax penalty because of the subsidies, as i understand it.

Your guys in the office should go look at the Kaiser Foundation Web site, which has a very nifty calculator for all this.

the Court has held in a license tax cases that something can be a constitutional exercise of the taxing power whether or not it is called a tax. And that's because the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct tomorrow is different from the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct today. Tomorrow the question is whether Congress has the authority under the taxing power to enact it and the form of words doesn't have a dispositive effect on that analysis.

Amy Howe: In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

The MANDATE is really, really unpopular, and it will be especially so because now it's carved in stone...and when the Republicans further emphasize its status as A TAX.

It made turning 65 something to look forward to, as bothersome as figuring out what was the best supplemental to choose (I recommend Plan F, unless you have good HMO type offerings in your state. I don't.) And, given how much my insurance had cost me, I was desperately looking forward to getting older and aging into Medicare!

I was finally able to afford to get physical therapy I'd needed but couldn't manage the high co-pays for each visit. It won't be as effective as if I'd had it at the time of the injury, but it's helped me function better going forward. Oh, with some exceptions, I can choose my own doctors, even get those second and third opinions.

Thank you, so much, LBJ, and all the people, Dems and those disappearing moderate Republicans, who worked for decent health care for the elderly. Thank you, Harry S. and FDR, along with the real Progressives of the early 20th Century. Thank you, TR. Thanks to everyone who ever worked for social safety nets and fairness.

So terribly sad Medicare was not made available to everyone. Or at least, as Hillary had proposed, the age to enter Medicare could have been lowered, but it wasn't "on the table". It could have helped so very many people, esp'ly now with so many people in their late 50's/early 60's downsized, fired, unable to find work -- losing their health insurance or spending their retirement savings (as I did) to stay insured.