Biggirl
First off your local insurance costs are hardly reflective of national norms. Nationally rates may be bad, but not that bad.
Bad yes but scarcely that $7441 for individuals and $35,000 for families. And since this isn’t all about Brooklyn, let’s keep to nation al norms for the discussion.
And some people are insured despite their job’s not providing it. Sure, they pay full retail for the insurance product, but they are also not benefiting from the subsidy that those whose employeer provides insurance enjoy.
I fail to understand why the regressive nature of this subsidy is inapparant to you. Look at it this way. Imagine some highly compensated individual (use me, I’m a doctor in a busy practice, I’m up there at 33% taxation on marginal income) is paid as taxable compensation the amount now pretax paid for health insurance. Let’s assume I have a good plan for my family and my company and I (with pretax dollars) now pay $15K for health insurance, but instead I am given that as income, and buy my own. I pay $5K of that as taxes and have to kick in that amount to buy the same product (assuming I could actually purchase it at that price as an individual and not of my large corporation of doctors, an unlikely supposition) Now in reality buying that product for me is subsidizing me that $5K. Thank you. I’ll put it to my home redo. But I’d rather have a sytem that works than the subsidy. Meanwhile the less well paid professsor with an income taxed at a marginal rate of 20% also gets a subsidy on her health insurance purchase, but she is only getting $3K of help. And the worker whose job does not provide healthcare benefits must purchase healthcare insurance with no subsidy whatsoever.
Compare this with a system that say counted all health insurance benefits as part of taxable compensation and instead of subsidizing through tax avoidance, subsidizes all evenly, or, dare I hope, actually subsidizes those who cannot afford it substantially more, and subsidizes people like me less or not at all?
No that’s not Bush’s plan. But it is a baby step in that direction and even that may be more than is passable through Congress.
I disagree. The free market only exists when both consumers and producers obey the law. Would the free market exist if the courts did not enforce contracts between both parties? Would the free market exist if the government did not prosecute thieves? Without the government levying penalties against consumers or producers when either violates the law, the free market would not be possible.
The enforcing of the law is an integral part of the free market, and jury awards are a necessary part of that. If you artificially cap jury awards, but not premiums, you create an unfair advantage for the insurance companies. The free market only works when both parties enter into a contract on a level playing field. Capping awards tilts the playing field against the consumer by limiting his power to force producers to obey the law.
I agree. The government needs to set clear laws with clear penalties. This is not changed under any sort of award cap.
Awards are only “capped” in the sense that non-economic damages are capped (i.e., “punitive damages”). Actual damage awards are not affected. If a doctor accidently cuts off a guy’s arm, and he’s a construction worker and thus unable to work in the future, the doctor (or, more accurately, his insurance company) will have to compensate the man for this economic loss. That is not capped. What is capped is the additional punitive damages that juries like to levy. That is completely reasonable, especially given some juries’ love of incredibly high punitive damages.
Personally, I think such caps should be part of our national strategy to control health care costs, but only a small part. I don’t necessarily think that such caps will significantly lower costs (although they may slow the rate of increase).
Capping premiums, on the other hand, is a recipe for disaster. If you make it unprofitable for these businesses to sell policies (as a cap would do), you are going to force businesses to stop offering such policies. Less companies = less competition, which is bad for eveyone (as someone in Maryland, where 2 companies control 92% of the individual and small group market, I can personally attest to this).
I fail to understand how you can see this as a regressive subsidy. IF an employer is generous enough to pay a portion of their employee’s healthcare, then it doesn’t matter how much the employee makes. All full time employees gets the same benefits. The girl who cleans the cafeteria and makes scarcely more than minimum wage has the exact same benefit package as the CEO. The CEO may choose to add riders to this package at his expense-- but, according to the cites above, the cafeteria girl is just as obliged to pay this new tax as is the CEO.
Even in the scenario you provided-- YOU can choose to ‘buy on your own’ because YOU make a buttload of money. Your receptionist does not have this option but she is obliged to pay the tax because she cannot afford health insurance on her own. She is taxed and does not receive any credit.
That’s not the definition of “free market.” If the law mandated a particular wage or a particular price for a product or service, that would be the very antithesis of “free market.”
Biggirl, are you being deliberately contrary just because this plan was proposed by GW Bush? I’ve know you for quite a few years now, and you’re not this stupid, you’re just not. Why is it that you are having such difficulty with concepts like benefits are a form of compensation and tax breaks can help people afford stuff they might not be able to without them? I mean, this is kindergarten level stuff here.
Oh good! May I come into your store and steal what I want? Because if you call the police, that is apparently government intruding into the free market, right?
How is it disguised? If this plan went through, it would save me approximately $3000, back in my pocket, after tax money. That a personal anecdote, true, but I’m far from the only one in my type of situation. That’s immaterial, however, to your argument. The other half of the plan would increase taxes only on those who receive the highest benefits (which you’ve just admitted are a form of compensation). You’ve been a hard core “tax those who make the most money and use the money to help those who make less” advocate for as long as you’ve been posting here. Now that Bush is proposing to do exactly that, you’re somehow against it. Tell me how that is not hypocritical?
You are deliberately mischaraterizing what Bricker wrote. He was not talking about theft, obviously. What he was saying was that laws may infringe on the free market. Yes, there must be a structure of laws for a free market to function, but to say that any law enacted is consistent with a free market is nonsense. After all, the USSR had a number of laws that companies were forced to follow, but they were quite far from a free market.
Yeah, I have been a hard core “Tax those who can afford it”. This plan does NOT do that. What this plan will do is tax those who cannot afford to pay for their own insurance to give breaks to those who can.
Biggirl, because it is untrue. Nonsense is always hard to understand.
About 40% of Americans are currently uninsured. They work but their jobs do not provide health insurance. The employer-based model, a model that no other industrialized nation uses, and for good reason, is a dismal failure. If they get insurance then they get a tax credit. No question it is not enough for some … especially in Brooklyn… but it helps, and those who already do buy their own insurance clearly benefit. Your hypothetical cleaning girl… is getting compensated with healthcare coverage, say a family plan coverage. Count it as income and then tax credit her for $15K even if it is less than that on her W2. She is not behind and may be ahead. Hell, Bush’s proposal is wimpy enough that it is even budget neutral on me.
How is this a tax on those who can’t afford to pay for their own insurance? HOW? The proposed tax only applies to those who get in excess of $15K (7.5K single) worth of health insurance benefits from their employer, and even then it’s only on the amount that is in excess of 15K (7.5K single). That’s a far cry from “is tax those who cannot afford to pay for their own insurance to give breaks to those who can”. In fact it’s the opposite. Why are you misrepresenting what we’re talking about?
Just because most people who are uninsured are poor, it does not mean that most people whose companies pay for part of their insurance are wealthy. Those people who are too poor to afford to buy health insurance now will still be too poor to buy health insurance-- even with a tax credit and even if they do not live in Brooklyn.
The people who will be getting tax credits with this plan are the people who can already afford to pay for their own insurance. The people getting soaked are the people who cannot afford their own insurance but have a portion of that insurance paid by their employer.
This plan is not a step in the right direction. This plan is a tax on the middle class dressed up like a tax credit for the poor.
Alright Biggirl, let’s do this in baby steps. Let’s say you have to pay for your own insurance. You have a family of 4, 2 adults and 2 kids. Middle class. The adults are 40, good health, don’t smoke. Would you say that $250/month for good health insurance is a reasonable price? How about $475/month? Which is more affordable? I would say yes, and the first one, obviously. Do you agree?
I just now ran a quote proposal for that exact family. The same insurance that I have for my family would run them $478/month (in fact, except for the ages of the adults, I used my info-same address, same kids). That’s $5736 per year in health insurance premiums. I can afford that. There are middle class people who can’t. Under this new plan, that family would be able to write $15,000 off their taxes instead of $5736. That’s an additional $9264 that they can write off. At a 30% tax rate (good rough estimate), that’s $2780 each year that goes back into their pocket. Divide that 2780 by 12 and you get $231/month. Subtract that $231 from the health insurance premiums of $478, and the net monthly health insurance premium for our hypothetical family is is $247. Now, tell me again how this plan doesn’t make health insurance more affordable for the middle class. You’ll have to make a real good case, because the numbers say that it isn’t so.
As I understand it, right now they would not be able to deduct even the $5736 from their taxes, since there is no deduction for individuals who pay their own health insurance. Or am I missing something?
If we’re doing this in baby steps, does that mean I should give estimated increases in insurance costs for each year until a bare-bones middle-class plan exceeds the threshold, instead of just jumping ahead to the point in the early 2010s where that happens?
Er, you are attacking the notion that the rule of law is a sufficient condition for having a free market. What that has to do with Fear Itself’s claim that the rule of law is a necessary condition for having a free market passeth my understanding.