Looks like it’s not gonna happen.
“With Coverage in Peril and Obama Gone, Health Law’s Critics Go Quiet”
https://nyti.ms/2ljYg4X
My bold.
Is there any support left in Congress for repeal without replace? I thought this was the most radical group and now they are proposing a replacement as well.
House Freedom Caucus seeks swift Obamacare repeal,…
And what’s in that replacement?
Conservative GOP lawmakers back ObamaCare replacement
This is rather generous for the most radical plan out there.
I still don’t believe there’s support in Congress for any plan without Donald Trump tweeting some heads together. Let’s see what comes out of the white house.
Sure, just peachy, it would only result in the death of people like my husband - pre-existing conditions, serious health problem(s), very little money/personal resources.
The Republican plans are all predicated on the idea that we all have the money to throw around for such things. They do jack all nothing for people who don’t have the money in the first place.
And you know goddamned well their plans will only increase the number of people who don’t pay taxes, which will only be used to infuriate their base even further.
You think a $5,000-per-person tax credit is generous?
A tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your income tax. This is more beneficial than a tax deduction, which is a reduction in your taxable income, and thus only reduces your tax liability by your marginal rate multiplied by the deduction.
So, for someone in the 28% margin, a $1,000 tax credit is worth $1,000 in their pocket, but a $1,000 deduction is worth $280 in their pocket.
But the most a tax credit can do is take your tax down to zero. Once you get to that threshold, it can’t help you anymore. $5,000 per person sounds pretty good, but it doesn’t help too much if your income is low enough that you can’t take advantage of it.
For example, by my (very quick and rough) calculation, a family of four (two parents, two kids) earning $80,000 per year has a federal tax liability of $4,756. This is based on a simple tax return, with no retirement contributions. It uses the standard deduction, 4 exemptions (1 per family member), and factors in a $1,000-per-child tax credit that families on less than about $100K can claim.
So, while that $5,000 per person tax credit sounds great, this family of four with a gross income of $80,000 (considerably above the national household median) can’t even benefit fully from one person’s worth of tax credit. If the 4-person family earns $60,000 (much closer to the national median), the most they can benefit from this program is a tax credit of just under $1,800.
So, under this plan, a family on the median national income could reduce their tax by just under $2,000, to use towards a Health Savings Account. By contrast, a family on an income of $200,000 could probably fully fund a Health Savings Account, reducing their income tax by $20,000.
That’s what libertarian health reform looks like: reduce people’s tax liability, with the largest benefits going to the wealthy, and leave them to the insurance companies.
Edit: I did the tax calculations quickly, in my head, and using the IRS tax tables. Let me know if i screwed up.
I didn’t say it was peachy. In fact I said this seems to be the worst option out there now being discussed.
And I hate to defend it, but regarding pre-existing conditions it says:
And this is the worst outcome now being discussed in Congress (the actual outcome will be less bad).
Completely agree, that’s why I said in another thread, to me all these plans are right wing monstrosities.
I’m just pushing back against the most unrealistically negative perceptions (Trump Derangement Syndrome, not accusing any poster specifically here).
All the Republican plans now talk about advanceable refundable tax credits so that’s what I assume they all mean.
E.g. the link in the first paragraph of this NYT article.
Just like the Bush Tax Cuts. An actual $400 check, mailed to every American every month, with a congratulatory letter personally signed by Trump on gilded stationery. Because some people know how to do propaganda.
ETA: Seems I was a little optimistic, not all conservative Republicans support refundable tax credits. Conservatives Object to Obamacare Replacement’s Tax Credits
I’ve personally had one major complaint about the ACA:
If I am going to be financially penalized for failing to have insurance, then I should be allowed to sign up for a policy at any time. Setting a deadline of January 31 to get signed up and then not giving me another chance until November, while penalizing me for not having insurance February through October is asinine.
That’s a very logical argument you make. If they are going to penalize someone, they should give them every opportunity to not have to be penalized. Life changes, circumstances change. The other argument, of course, the one that gets so much attention is what right does the government have to tell anyone they have to have health insurance or pay a penalty anyway?
It would be nice if it worked like that, but too many people would do without insurance until they had a health condition to make it financially advantageous to have insurance. They wouldn’t sign up later in the year–they would do without for years because the penalty is less than premiums. Then one day when they get a major illness, they’d want to sign up at that time. They’d only get insurance when it made financial sense rather than as a safety net for expected events.
As filmore noted, there are good reasons not to have it work like that, especially since one of the benefits of the ACA is that you can’t be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Should i be allowed to sign up for car insurance only after i’ve had an accident? Or house insurance, only after my place burns down?
Also, you can sign up outside of the open enrollment period if you have life-changing circumstances that affect your prior coverage. If you get divorced, or married, or lose a job, or whatever, and your previous coverage is terminated or no longer available to you, you can apply for a special enrollment period.
So, basically, if you find yourself without insurance in April or June or October, it’s pretty likely to be for one of two reasons:
-
You had a life changing event, in which case you WILL, in fact, be allowed to sign up in April or June or October.
-
You chose not to sign up during the open enrollment period, in which you case you suffer the penalty for that.
Is your case a hypothetical? If not, then would you mind explaining why you failed to sign up during the open enrollment window?
As best I can tell from this story, he just wasn’t interested in signing up during open enrollment.
"It’s not refundable in the sense that if you didn’t pay taxes you don’t get money,” said Paul. “A new refundable tax credit is a subsidy by another name.”
Says the Kentucky fuckcicle, who is also a doctor.
But at least it shows the paralysis in the party. A significant number of Republicans think subsidies are immoral, and removing people’s access to health care is not.
One of the ACA replacement proposals will eliminate the tax penalty - but… if you don’t sign up :
- You wait until the next open enrollment
- The enrollment period will be much shorter
- You will pay a premium of 130% of the standard premium for a year.
Still this is more generous than Medicare. If you skip Part-D drug coverage for a year, you pay a 124% premium forever. Part-B is only 110% forever.
So I guess you can’t tax irresponsibility but you can charge for it.
No the financially penalty is to help to pay for people that don’t have insurance. And a wake up call for people that don’t understand. A prod to people to put their money in the pool to be draw on when you need it. And you will need it.
Oh, I fully understand the reason for “open enrollment” periods. It’s the coercion I don’t like.
As I mentioned in that thread, I have insurance through my union. However, I had just come back to this job in October 2015 (I had previously worked for this company from 2006 to 2013), and I had intended to sign up after I’d been back for 90 days, which would have been the end of January. But that’s where the weird thing happens with my job, which is in the convention business. “Convention season” ends mid-December and doesn’t really start up again until March, so I don’t have enough hours in January-February to qualify for the insurance in those months (we have to work 80 hours in a month to qualify), and in any case I’m more concerned with using what little money I make during those months to pay my damn rent. So even being on the plan, there still ends up being 4 months out of the year (the other dead time is July-August) where I don’t work enough hours to qualify for the insurance. So my insurance turns on and off, on and off …
Meanwhile, a coworker, with the same job title, was telling me about his attempts to get on Obamacare so that he could actually have coverage all year and not need to deal with this “on-off” business. The ACA people ran him around in circles and basically told him that he didn’t qualify for Obamacare because he had insurance available through his job.
And, yet, he was still liable for penalties for being uninsured during the “off” months. It’s a clusterfuck that our union should have thought of when they were yelling at us to vote Democrat and to support the ACA.
(I could start a whole 'nother thread about how this “on-off” business also screws with trying to claim unemployment benefits during the slow times. Short version: we qualify for UI due to “lack of work” or “temporary reduction in hours”, but they still insist that we go out and do three “job search activities” every week that we claim, even though doing so is a complete waste of everybody’s time, since nobody is going to hire a cook for 6-8 weeks knowing that we’ll be gone as soon as convention season starts up again.)
Don’t you mean Paul Ryan? You know, the guy who doesn’t like it that people with icky diseases like cancer cost an awful lot to treat?
That situation certainly sucks.
I’m no expert on all of the specific details of the ACA, but if my reading of the government’s website is correct, you should be able to sign up for a Marketplace account when your job insurance lapses.
Also, it seems to me that if your two “dead times” in your industry are shorter than three months, you should be able to avoid the penalty.
According to the site:
You say that July-August is dead. If i’m reading the above quote correctly, as long as you’re insured for at least one day in June, and at least one day in September, then the July-August break should not trigger a penalty.
The mid-December to mid-March break is longer, so you might end up with more than two months without coverage. But even then, if you’re covered for one day in December, and one day in March, then that’s still only two months without coverage.
It’s not clear to me, however, if you’re allowed to have more than one two-month gap in any given year, or if one is the limit.
Well, some conservatives have backed out of supporting the Republican Obamacare Repeal plan, saying that the tax credits included are simply more “entitlements”.