The $1,600/month gold plan coverage for both Bill and Melinda. Doctor visits were $15 and the deductible was $800/year so yes good coverage. Now it is certainly debatable how affordable $800-$100 a month/per person health care coverage is. But the root of the problems is the country spends $10,365 per person on health care. The one group that almost certainly cost over $10,365 a year is folks over 60. Now they good news is that on average they are the most likely to be able to afford to pay that price for insurance.
The bad news is that leaves many folks unable to afford good insurance. Ironically that group includes the stereotypically Trump vote older white guys without college education. However, it is possible for many of these people to buy catastrophic coverage or other forms of less expensive insurance and with aid of $250-$300/month tax credit be able to afford them.
The key word is draft once they have to pretend to make it revenue neutral insurance subsidies for millionaire and billionaires are going to dissappear… I know for a fact that draft proposal for IRAs didn’t include an income phaseout, but guess what they are income phaseouts for IRAs today. I suspect the same thing is true for the child tax credit, but I didn’t follow that debate.
The chart you posted is bullshit. For exactly the reasons I just explained.
ALL people over the age of 50 who purchase ACA policy on the exchanges receive a subsidy regardless of their income level. I suspect it is actually more of subsidy than the $4,000 proposed. We charge young people more money for their insurance policy in order to lower the cost for old people.
Nobody’s denying that. It’s half the point of the ACA. But if you’re worried about the tax progressivity implications of that the answer isn’t to remove the subsidy to lower income people.
Putting a means cap on the credit would be fine, but this is all kind of beside the point that Oliver is making.
The rich people getting money is wasteful, so we should deal with that… but this is of minimal importance to the idea of young people not being able to afford insurance at all because the tax credit doesn’t help them and they’re too poor.
Because ultimately, while young people don’t normally need health insurance, when they do, if they can’t afford it and don’t have it, they are screwed. This is the point of insurance, right?
The GOP is stuck in this stupid place, where they’re demonized the individual mandate, without really acknowledging it’s purpose… and the system doesn’t WORK without it. And THEIR system won’t work without it either.
In order for insurance to work, ANY INSURANCE, the system needs to be supported by folks who don’t normally use it. For most insurance types, this is essentially accomplished through an individual mandate… you can’t drive a car, or own a house, without insurance.
I realize there is no bill so there is really no way to to confirm, well anything, but I thought they were talking about taking away tax credits from employers. Unless you sign your paychecks yourself, that would hit… pretty much everyone, regardless of income, who receives employer-based health insurance.
[quote]
“House Republican leaders have a new version of their major Obamacare repeal and replacement bill. They just don’t want you to see it. 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 Energy and 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.”[/quote]
But as of now, that reading room does not have the proposed bill.
Yeah there are a few articles, but they’re reference a bill no one but our dictatorship like government run by apparently just a handful of white guys now has seen right?
All this talk about deductions and tax brakes and things for the exchange mean nothing when it comes to those employer plans. The bulk of the population still gets their insurance from their employer.
Speaking of Kaiser
In 2014, 66% of nonelderly workers received an offer of coverage from their employer; less than the 71% offer rate in 1999 (Figure 1). ESI offer rates vary by workers’ full-time status. Employees who worked part time (less than 30 hours a week at all their jobs) were less likely to be offered coverage from their employer than were employees who worked full time (30 or more hours a week) (21% vs. 72%).
With all this Obamacare talk they might just be trying to sneak that employer piece through which is bullshit. To be clear, a reduction in that is a reduction in pay. They’re talking about a pay-cut for most working employees with insurance unless the companies just absorb that.
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'"
If I know today’s Republican leadership at all, whatever they’re cooking up would end up screwing over anyone who isn’t already loaded.*
*in the short term it may also cost young AND healthy people less, but as they age, not so much.
