Originally published at: 5 Points on the Impact of Congress Letting ACA Subsidies Expire - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Last fall, we lived through the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. For 43 days, Democrats on Capitol Hill pushed for the extension of expiring Affordable Care Act credits, warning that failing to do so would send health care costs skyrocketing for millions of Americans. Congressional Republicans held firm, a handful of Senate Democrats eventually…
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Conservative think tanks have cited the enhanced premium tax credits’ 10-year $335 billion cost to the federal deficit as too costly to the American taxpayer to extend. But the lost subsidies will also have several unintended consequences for the struggling U.S. health care sector.
Like, seriously?
And revenues for a 50%, $500 billion/ year increase in the defence budget for a President who like to invade other countries was written into the tax law?
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The subsidies are a priority for voters, even if they aren’t for members of Congress
Congress has their own Cadillac healthcare plan.
Not to mention someone has to pay for Trump’s ballroom, war and hundreds of lawsuits.
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Look, we could extend subsidies to cover physical and mental health for all Americans, or we could channel that money into an illegal, unwinnable war to balm the bruised ego of a decaying, demented, narcissistic pedophile. All I’m saying is it’s a tough call.
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Yeah, and insuring all those Americans will never fatten Dear Leader’s bank account the way tapping into Iranian oil revenues will.
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HSAs are just savings accounts. Eligibility should be expanded, since nearly all plans include deductibles now and an HDHP doesn’t give the premium savings it used to. But it’s not a solution to this problem. It’s just giving people the “freedom” to put aside money they don’t have.
The ACA was and is great, but it’s just a band aid to avoid some level of universal healthcare access. You need to address the cost for care in a healthcare system distributed through insurance. Total claims need to be less than total premium. Focusing on premium oversimplifies the problem and just hides the speed that premiums are increasing to cover the cost of care.
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“The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” — George Orwell, 1984
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The Democrats need to stop dancing around the edges and campaign for national healthcare – even if it’s 90 years since Frances Perkins pushed the Dems to enact national health care. The ACA, which was based on the Swiss model, still failed to allow no-penalty policy shopping every 12 months as in Switzerland, or a mandatory component that requires everybody to have coverage (indigence is no excuse, the state gives money to pay for the policy). Moreover, if Big Pharma insists that its profits would be hurt, use the Swedish, Dutch or Danish model. In all cases, more people would be covered, rates would fall and the overall cost of the system per capita would be much less. In all of these systems, the notion of personal bankruptcy from hospital bills is unknown. Make the Republicans own their healthcare failures. There are long-standing functional models that the US has resisted because of legislative capture and free-rider problems. National healthcare (insurance) for all.
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Part of the ACA requires Congress and their staff to buy their health insurance on the ACA marketplace. It’s pretty heavily subsidized, and I’m sure that most of those folks have the high-level plans that are like, you know, actual insurance.
What Congress critters have (but their staffers do not) is access to first-class concierge medicine through Walter Reed and Bethesda.
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The ACA is and has always been the Republican plan. It was enacted by Democrats, and therefore must be torn out root-and-stem. The problem they have is trying to figure out what to replace their plan with. The only certainty is that whatever the replacement is, it will stink on ice.
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Welp, how about removing health coverage from Congress members? Let’em feel the pinch.
I’m not in a forgiving mood.
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Also, Walter Reed can be utilized by members of Congress, but not their families.
So, while members of Congress are structurally inside the ACA system, financially they look much more like workers with a generous large employer plan than like the millions of people who rely on the individual market. They choose among commercial plans on an ACA exchange, but they do so with a built-in, taxpayer funded subsidy that covers most of the cost. They do not have to navigate the subsidy cliff that their constituents are now worried about.
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I prefer something more significant. Channel the $$ into building a world class single payer system, like other nations in the civilized world enjoy. Or better yet, socialized medicine.
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I’ve reached the point where I no longer give a fuck. If people are going to be hellbent on voting for rich fucks who laugh while they die, then fuck them. They’re begging to be trampled on and discarded and why should I waste any effort to even try to get through to these fucking people? Instead, we take on the rich fucks who are behind this shit, tax them into oblivion, prosecute the criminals - because you don’t amass $1B or more by following the rules - and we create a society that works for us, the left. if the trailer park mouth breathers benefit from Medicare for all, fine. But I’m done giving a fuck about morons who are begging to be kicked.
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Actually, not at all. Fairy dust and moonbeams as a replacement program have been winning elections for Republicans since the Obama Administration. Just run on the promise that “I have a plan!!!” and they’ll bite, no questions asked.
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As Mr Trump is finding out, don’t be surprised if the feeling is mutual.
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How much would extending the subsidies have cost in comparison to the cost of the war, excursion, or whatever the fuck they’re calling it today? That’s all I want to know.
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This is a timely article, because I just got a $135.00 bill yesterday for an office visit. That’s the part my insurance won’t pay even though they would have last year.
Also, yesterday gas here (regular) in SoCal was at $5.95 gal.
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The ACA has it’s faults, but it improved our healthcare system immensely. You could argue it should have been differently, but it wasn’t a failure. The problem is that it maxed out the private insurance model. It wasn’t a long term solution to begin with but Ds again underestimated how far Rs will go to destroy something that doesn’t fit their beliefs. Those million people leaving the risk pool because Rs eliminated the subsidy are going to have a brutal impact. Healthy risk is leaving, and hospitals/providers are going to lose money to defaulted uninsured debt
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