I had heard something about that, but that sheds more light on it than I knew. I think it would be glorious if a splinter Republican faction kept Trump from replacing Obamacare. Heck, I expected that sort of implosion several years ago. Still hoping for a third party to emerge out of this nonsense. Maybe this could help that happen.
From your speculation to God’s ears.
BTW, please check out John Oliver’s fact-filled segment on YouTube regarding the GOP’s vexing problem of how to “repeal and replace” the ACA now that their proverbial dog has caught up with the garbage truck.
Johnathan Chait wrote a good article about this subject a few days ago.
I hadn’t heard about that “Placeholder” thing in the replacement legislation until Oliver’s segment. The defence of it was truly gobsmacking in its chutzpah.
It’s software astronaut thinking on a legislative level…
Thanks for posting the link, @Timex . I was a bit negligent in not doing so.
BTW, anyone interested in watching the segment who doesn’t have HBO needs to hurry up and watch it because IME it typically goes away when the next episode of the show airs.
Oliver’s piece is a decent comedy but not exactly fact filled. The issues he points out on the Republican plan are real, but what he fails to address is that in most cases they are better than the current ACA system. I’ll post more later.
I still expect budget reconciliation to kill the ACA by refusing to pay for it. Maybe slowly, but still a death.
Placeholder
The document is being treated a bit like a top-secret surveillance intercept. It is expected to be available to members and staffers on the House and Energy Commerce panel starting Thursday, but only in a dedicated reading room, one Republican lawmaker and a committee aide said. Nobody will be given copies to take with them.
The unusual secrecy is a reflection of the sensitivity – and the stakes – surrounding the GOP effort to rewrite the Affordable Care Act, a top priority of President Donald Trump, who has yet to offer his own plan.
“God damn it how can we reword everything without changing any policies? We can’t acknowledge publicly that the ACA is a Republican wet dream and forged out of the bowels of RomneyCare!”
OK, this was well done.
Hey, it was a setup, you’re welcome.
So let’s take Oliver’s mocking of the Republican plan to give a refundable tax credit based on age.
“62-year-old Bill Gates would get a tax credit of $3,000 which as Oliver hilariously points out Bill Gates doesn’t need, ha ha”
What John doesn’t point out that is that under ACA if Bill G was going to buy health care under ACA he is already getting a huge subsidy simply because he is over 60.
ACA limits age-based premiums to a maximum of 3 times for young people for the 62-65-year-olds. When in fact, the true cost of providing health care for this group is actually 5 times more expensive. That is a form of wealth transfer from young people to the old. It is actually a crazy wealth transfer since the American with the most wealth are those over 65 followed closely by the 50-64-year-olds who have the highest household income and 2nd most wealth.
Bill and Melinda are rich so they could easily afford the $1,600 month for ACA gold plan in Washington State. There so many distortions between subsidies for old folks, and various insurance companies subsidies (e.g. risk corridors ) and removing of pretty existing conditions that it hard to know what insurance would cost. But if we simply remove the age-based premium limits Bill G policy would cost likely cost $2,100-$2,500. After the refundable tax credit, the cost would drop to $1,600-2,000. So in fact, Bill G and Melinda are already getting an insurance subsidy of at least $6,000 a year and likely closer to $10,000. This subsidy, like the various subsidies paid to insurance companies, are in theory paid by young people who buy ACA insurance, and the taxpayers at large, but in practice just stuck on our collective credit card debt.
Traditionally tax credit like this (e.g. Child Tax credit) are phased out for incomes over 100K and probably the same thing would happen with the health insurance tax credit.
Between the tax credits for HSA’s and the tax credits for nannies*, I’m going to need to knock off my cotton candy and barbiturate habits, gonna need that disposable income now.
*Full disclosure, I don’t actually need a nanny, unless I get one for my cats
$2k a month per person? What’s the percentage of people that can easily afford that??
That’s more than 1/3rd median income for that age bracket, close to 1/2.
Am I correctly assuming that has no deductibles and no ceiling at least?
I’m not sure “most” is accurate, but I agree that it’s likely that the Republicans will come up with some number of improvements over the status quo. The problem is that those places where it’s not an improvement will hit hardest against those who can least afford to lose anything. Rollback of Medicaid expansion, for instance. Or removal of the required coverage of preventative care, which may reduce premium costs for those plans that eliminate it but will also encourage low-income patients to put off doctor visits as long as possible since they’ll be on the hook for up-front costs.
Except there’s no phase out in the GOP proposals.[quote]The House Discussion Draft and Price bill take a simpler approach and specify the actual dollar amounts for a new refundable tax credit that could be used to purchase individual market coverage. The amounts vary only with age. In the House Discussion Draft, tax credits range from $2,000 for people under age 30, to $2,500 for people ages 30 to 39, $3,000 for people age 40 to 49, $3,500 for people age 50 to 59, and $4,000 for people age 60 and over starting in 2020. In the Price bill, tax credit amounts in 2017 range from $900 for people under age 18 to $3,000 for people age 50 and over, which we estimate would increase by 2020 to range from $900 to $3,150. The tax credits in both of these replacement plans would be available to people of all incomes who purchase individual market coverage. People who sign up for public programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, public employee health benefit programs, would not be eligible for a tax credit. [/quote]
Yep, Bill Gates sure is bearing the brunt of this change.