# The Patient Protection Act Is About To Put $1.3 BILLION Back In Consumers' Pockets

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-patient-protection-act-is-about-to-put-1-3-billion-back-in-consumers-pockets/621665>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 12, 2012, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-patient-protection-act-is-about-to-put-1-3-billion-back-in-consumers-pockets/621665 "2012-05-12T02:19:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2012, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-patient-protection-act-is-about-to-put-1-3-billion-back-in-consumers-pockets/621665/11 "2012-05-12T03:36:49Z")

</div>

> [@Martin\_Hyde](#):
>
> Unless you have individual insurance you don’t get a dime. If you are under an employers plan your employer gets the money back, not you personally. That’s why the $1.3bn is going back to only around 16m Americans, if you aren’t a corporation or a small business owner or someone with an individual plan, you are not getting a rebate. But for those that do get rebates–congratulations, you made an interest free loan to the multibillion dollar insurance company that you buy health insurance from! You can also expect that as the years go on health insurance companies will get better and better at making sure fewer and fewer dollars fall under this requirement.
> 
> Now that I think about it, a lot of the people getting rebates are probably Republicans, since this money will disproportionately be going to people like small business owners, or corporations (which aren’t human people at all.)

Bzzzzt. The law requires businesses to return it to the employees.

[QUOTE=Mark Halperin]

The rebates will average around $127 for the over 3 million individuals who receive them directly. Small employers covering almost 5 million people will receive around $377 million (an average break of $76), while larger employers covering about 7.5 million people will get approximately $541 million (an average of $72). According to administration officials, employers are obligated to pass those savings onto their employees.

Read more: [http://thepage.time.com/2012/05/11/halperins-take-why-aca-rebates-are-a-big-deal/#ixzz1ucfNp5Nr](http://thepage.time.com/2012/05/11/halperins-take-why-aca-rebates-are-a-big-deal/#ixzz1ucfNp5Nr)  
[/quote]  
It’s stunning to me that we can’t even get agreement that $1.3 billion freaking dollars being returned to people who didn’t have it appropriately applied to their healthcare is a good thing. What happened to the usual Republican chant of “it’s my money, you can’t take it from me, give it back”? I’ll bet you $10,000 that if this was a government administered program returning $1.3 billion dollars to taxpayers that it overcharged, you rightwingers would be SCREAMING bloody murder about inefficient “big” government. It’s getting to be absurd.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-patient-protection-act-is-about-to-put-1-3-billion-back-in-consumers-pockets/621665)._