Looks like those town hall meetings really got their attention.
If they can’t come to an agreement over something as minor as this then they are in real trouble. The ACA is the canary in the coal mine. If they can’t mess with the insurance of 20 million people how will they attack long standing and unambiguously popular social benefit programs like SS & Medicare?
It could be argued that simple repeal is better than an expanded deduction without a refundable tax credit. Of course, both are horrible compared to the ACA.
Bottom line–Republicans, the Party of Ayn “Social Darwinism” Rand want the poor. elderly and disabled to die off. And they will say that’s it’s “Gawd’s Will” for them to do so.
That’s it
The rich are OK
Fuck the poors
They should have had rich parents like us
May they all get cancer.
The only person in the Western world who did not know that “health-care is complicated” was the so-called president.
I think this is more likely to be the GOP’s Waterloo.
And they say Marshall Ney was in over his head.
“The feds are going to put in refundable tax credits – a new entitlement system, all of our entitlements are bankrupt,” Rep. David Brat (R-VA), member of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters last month.
Anyone who doesn’t think the hard right part of the Republican hegemony doesn’t want to strip our government back to pre FDR levels on social programs just ain’t listening to these guys.
This makes no sense at all. Health insurance premiums already are tax deductable – the very first line of Schedule A for itemized deductions is “medical and dental expenses”. And the very first line of the instructions is:
Examples of Medical and Dental Payments You Can Deduct
To the extent you weren’t reimbursed, you can deduct what you paid for: Insurance premiums for medical and dental care, including premiums for qualified long-term care insurance contracts as defined in Pub. 502.
The problem is that lower income families don’t itemize their deductions. If you don’t own your home so that you’re paying mortgage interest, there’s a 99% chance you’re going with the standard deduction. I mean, if your annual income is $25K or $30K and you have medical expenses that exceed the $12,600 standard deduction, getting or not getting a tiny tax break is the least of your problems!
At least when the GOP repeals Obamacare, all the Drumpf voters will still have the Affordable Care Act to help them out.
Skip straight to #5.
No plan. No leadership. No help. No thanks.
But, at least we can bash on some illegal immigrant who has been here for years with no criminal record whatsoever and cheer when he’s deported as his kids and wife look on.
Does that count as stress wellness under GOPNoCare?
Face it. The current Republican party should change its name to the Anarchist party. They want to destroy government and have no interest in or see no need for anything government does other than function as a money sump-pump to suck $$ from the bottom and pump it to the top. It makes one pine for the good ole days of the Know Nothing Party (which still has a significant faction in today’s R party).
I have an improvement for them: have a non-refundable deduction plus eliminate the home mortgage deduction so few below the upper middle class/lower upper class will have enough deductions to get any benefit from a health insurance deduction (as the standard deduction will be greater). This will give the sump-pump a bigger pool to suck from.
By the way, don’t confuse deduction with tax credit. The credit excludes income from tax, the deduction subtracts income from taxable income and needs to make a taxpayer’s total deductions larger than the standard deduction to have any value. Although it may look otherwise, only the part of a deduction that has any value is the portion that increases total deductions beyond the standard deduction.
It is not about making sense or doing something for lower income people. It is all about being true to their ideology and praying to the goddess Ayn Rand.
They should have had rich parents or be crooks like us.
There are many GOP congress-critters who would like to repeal the ACA now, ride out the collapse of the exchanges, blame that implosion on the pre-repeal ACA, promise after the mid-terms a cheaper, “patient-centered,” healthcare based in the unicorn word, ‘access,’ and then offer up HSA and catastrophic capped national plans in 2019.
The basic dice roll is: the health insurance market is gigantic, and, if the repeal also causes the insurance companies to suddenly contract, that could crater the stock and bond markets.
bonus:
Did you ever wonder if CDS’s figure into health insurance portfolios?
Yes, unless you’re rich, tax deductions = $0. Everything up to the standard deduction is irrelevant. Even past the standard deduction, many families are in the 15% tax bracket, so you’re only talking about 15 cents benefit for each dollar of deduction, plus you hafta wait a year for it to arrive with your refund. It’s truly a piddly amount.