by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, TAXES, TRUMP
While we’re on the subject of tax reform, one particular item that could be included in the package is the elimination of the individual mandate. Since SCOTUS classified the penalty as a tax, it is one that can be repealed as part of the reform, and would produce an estimated savings of $338 billion over 10 years, according to current CBO figures.
Eliminating the individual mandate would not affect Medicaid or pre-existing conditions; it would simply allow taxpayers to have the freedom to decide if he or she wants to forego insurance without being penalized (taxed) for their choice. According to the Wall Street Journal and IRS data, more than 90% of households who paid the “individual shared responsibility payment” (tax) earned less than $75,000. The tax is essentially a tax on the poor.
Republicans would be wise to repeal the mandate, ease the tax burden on taxpayers, and use the savings gained within the rest of the tax package to strengthen other parts of the reform proposals and provide meaningful relief for all taxpayers.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, LAW, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
I’m sick and tired of reading over and over again in places both liberal and conservative that Trump’s (as well as the Republican’s) proposed tax reforms are going to give the lion’s share of the cuts to the top 1%. The entire concept is totally distorted.
In fact, nobody has been talking about the series of tax changes that occurred when Obama and his Democrat cronies passed the Obamacare increases. These raised the Bush tax rates on only the wealthiest from 36% – 39.6 % and then again raised the tax rates on the wealthiest by adding a net investment income tax (NIIT), otherwise known as the “Obamacare tax,” which covered all investment income. The increase also raised capital gains tax on the wealthiest from 15% – 20%. When the 3.8% tax is added, capital gains rates effectively went from 15%- 23.8% — an increase of almost 60%. That’s ridiculous!
Those ludicrous tax increases were principally responsible — along with the hemorrhage of regulations coming out of the Obama administration — for the horrific economic performance since Obama took office. The first step of any meaningful tax reform should be to reverse those Obamacare tax increases, which went 100% to the higher income individuals, and 0% to the middle class and lower income. The reversal of those insane tax increases should in no way be considered a tax cut. It is just restoring what was in fact an egregious toxin on our entire economy.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TRUMP
Anthem announced today that it would discontinue individual insurance coverage plans in Virginia in 2018, the third major insurer to do so this year; Aetna and United Health announced their plans earlier in the year. For Anthem, this marks the 4th state change so far in 2017, after Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
In their press release, Anthem noted,
“Today, planning and pricing for ACA-compliant health plans has become increasingly difficult due to a shrinking and deteriorating Individual market, as well as continual changes and uncertainty in federal operations, rules and guidance, including cost sharing reduction subsidies and the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage. As a result, the continued uncertainty makes it difficult for us to offer Individual health plans statewide in Virginia.” Anthem will “reduce its plan offering and will only offer off-exchange plans in Washington and Scott Counties and the city of Bristol, VA.”
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the move would be significant: “More than 206,000 Virginians could lose their individual health insurance policies with the sudden withdrawal of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield in Virginia, the state’s largest insurer, from the federal exchange and individual market in 2018.” Anthem will still employer-based plans, as well as Medicare and Medicaid plans.
The move leaves just five insurers in Virginia — Optima, Kaiser, Piedmont, Cigna, and CareFirst. Some localities will be left with just one insurer choice next year. This move by Anthem is a big deal, and yet another major failure of the poor structuring of the entire Obamacare apparatus. Americans deserve better.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, BUSINESS, ECONOMY, FREEDOM, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have published data which projects that 1,332 counties (over 40%) will have only one health insurer on Obamacare in 2018 and 49 will have none. According to CNSNews, “the data comes from the Health Insurance Exchanges Issuer County Map, which shows projected issuer participation on the Health Insurance Exchanges in 2018 based on the issuer public announcements made prior to late July of 2017.”
Successful healthcare systems do not continuously lose insurers, accumulate massive debt, and leave citizens with little to no choice. Obamacare has continued to wreak havoc on our citizens. It has to go. We can do better.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, FREEDOM, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
I have to admit that I was a bit surprised to read an article by AEI (“This health care tax could spark a GOP civil war,” July 13, 2017) which treated the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) as a pesky tax that was wreaking havoc on health care reform, because <gasp>, some Republicans wanted to eliminate it.
But nobody has been talking about the series of tax changes that occurred when Obama and his Democrat cronies passed the Obamacare increases in the first place. These raised the Bush tax rates on only the wealthiest from 36% – 39.6 % and then again raised the tax rates on the wealthiest by adding the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT), which covered all investment income. Then there was the 0.9% Obamacare Medicare surtax on upper-income earners. Obamacare increases also raised capital gains on the wealthiest ones from 15% – 20%. When the 3.8% tax would get tacked on, capital gains rates effectively went from 15%- 23.8% — an increase of about 55%. Taxes like these punish investment!
How is that not ridiculous? Or rather, how is it considered ridiculous that some Republicans want to eliminate the NIIT? Democrats continuously refer to it as an “upper-class tax cut.” Don’t fall for the rhetoric!
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
The 19th co-op since the creation of Obamacare has announced it will cease offering services at the end of 2017. Known as the “Minuteman Health of Massachusetts and New Hampshire,” this co-op will look to reorganize as a new venture to be called the “Minuteman Insurance Company.”
According to the Washington Free Beacon,
“The company cited issues with Obamacare’s risk-adjustment program, which is the program that shifts money away from those with healthier customers to those with sicker enrollees. Minuteman Health said that the negative impact of this program had been “substantial.”
“Unfortunately, the program has not worked as intended,” the company said. “It has been difficult for insurers to predict their risk-adjustment obligations, which has led some to withdraw from the ACA market.”
“The program also unfairly penalizes issuers like MHI that are small, low cost, and experience high growth,” the company said. “The significant relative impact from risk adjustment has been the principal driver of a reduction in MHI’s surplus and capital over 2 [sic] time.”
The co-op was able to grow to 37,000 members since it began in 2014 but said that being subject to certain co-op rules made it hard to adjust its business model to mitigate issues with the risk-adjustment program. The co-op was awarded $156.4 million in taxpayer-funded loans in 2012 and 2013.
The new company, Minuteman Insurance Company, will not be subject to these rules.
The ill-effects of the atrocious Obamacare legislation continues to disrupt lives. You’ll never hear about these failed co-ops, long considered a “jewel” of the program. How can any one rationally defend a 17% success rate for health care reform?
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We’ve written about the collapse of many Obamacare markets as well as the removal of several insurers from the Obamacare system across multiple states and exchanges. Earlier this year Aetna Inc. and Wellmark Inc. announced that they would not participate in Iowa for 2018 due to unsustainable costs; only the insurer Medica would be available in the state.
In response, Bloomberg reports that “Iowa is asking the Trump administration to let it reallocate millions of dollars and create a stopgap program that would provide health insurance options for 72,000 Iowans covered by the Affordable Care Act.
Under the proposal made public on Monday, the state would use $352 million in federal money to provide backup funding for insurers and overhaul Obamacare’s subsidies for consumers next year. The state would also create a single standardized plan that insurers would offer.”
Iowa’s proposal has three main pieces:
- It would create a standard plan, pegged to Obamacare’s mid-level silver offering. Insurers and consumers who want the extra help would need to buy that plan.
- The state would use about $220 million of funding to provide the new subsidies.
- And the state would create a reinsurance program, funded with an estimated $80 million, to help insurers deal with high-cost claims.
The program needs to be approved by the Trump administration and would be known as a “Stopgap” measure while the future of Obamacare gets played out in Congress. Nonetheless, the current form of Obamacare is financially unstable; expect to see more of these types of proposals in the coming months.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE
From the LATimes:
A proposal to adopt a single-payer healthcare system for California took an initial step forward Thursday when the state Senate approved a bare-bones bill that lacks a method for paying the $400-billion cost of the plan.
The proposal was made by legislators led by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) at the same time President Trump and Republican members of Congress are working to repeal and replace the federal Affordable Care Act.
The bill, which now goes to the state Assembly for consideration, will have to be further developed, Lara conceded, adding he hopes to reach a consensus on a way to pay for it.
Republican senators opposed the bill as a threat to the state’s finances.
“We don’t have the money to pay for it,” Sen. Tom Berryhill (R-Modesto) said. “If we cut every single program and expense from the state budget and redirected that money to this bill, SB 562, we wouldn’t even cover half of the $400-billion price tag.” (emphasis added)
Lara’s bill would provide a Medicare-for-all-type system that he believed would guarantee health coverage for all Californians without the out-of-pocket costs. Under a single-payer plan, the government replaces private insurance companies, paying doctors and hospitals for healthcare.
The California Nurses Assn., which sponsored the bill, released a fiscal analysis this week that proposed raising the state sales and business receipts taxes by 2.3% to raise $106 billion of the annual cost, with the rest proposed to come from state and federal funding already going to Medicare and Medicaid services.
Even if the bill is approved, it has to go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has been skeptical, and then voters would have to exempt it from spending limits and budget formulas in the state Constitution. In addition, the state would have to get federal approval to repurpose existing funds for Medicare and Medicaid.”
The state of California is already facing severe financial difficulties. To try to actually implement something like this, at so staggering a cost, would be reckless for the taxpayers of California. Hopefully, commonsense will prevail.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
President Donald Trump told the American public that he wants to keep Obamacare, at least to the extent of the provisions that protect individuals with pre-existing conditions and allow 26 years olds to stay on their parent’s plan.
This is, in fact, a ridiculous comment. Most people (myself included) believe that a competent Health Plan would contain these provisions. And they will. But they will be part of a new plan which will be entirely rewritten. No part of Obamacare should be retained. It needs to be repealed in total.
The new replacement for Obamacare can (and should) have provisions for people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance and even keeping 26 year olds on the plan (possibly), but not in the way the law is currently written. Free market pricing will keep overall costs down, and with respect to individuals whose premiums become unaffordable (due to pre-existing conditions, low income, etc) there could be risk-pools and/or subsidies to deal with the issues. The Obamacare method of forced overpayments and intrusively detailed regulation with perverse incentives on every component of health care, has failed. That’s why we’ve been seeing an exodus of insurers; they simply cannot sustain their fiscal health they way the current system is.
Only by replacing the law with one that focuses on free-market solutions can we make progress in fixing our health system to actually help our citizens and in a fiscally sound way.
by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, ECONOMY, OBAMACARE, TAXES
Last year, Aetna announced it would cease providing insurance in 11 states. Then in April, Aetna said that it would leave Virginia and Iowa, leaving just a few states with Aetna coverage. Now, Aetna has announced that it will leave Obamacare altogether, citing cost as the major factor.
According to Bloomberg, “Aetna had indicated it might pull out earlier this month, when Chief Financial Officer Shawn Guertin said the company would take steps to limit its financial losses in the program. Aetna has said it expects to lose more than $200 million on individual health plans this year in the four states where it’s still selling Affordable Care Act plans.”
As has been the case with other insurers like Humana, who have left the healthcare system, Aetna has been derailed by the dysfunction of Obamacare: the amount of Obamacare enrollees has been far fewer than originally projected (off by nearly 50%!) and those who have signed up have been more ill than expected.
The recent enrollment period was abysmal. “A total of 9.2 million Americans signed up for plans sold on HealthCare.gov, which serves 39 states, by the close of open enrollment. That’s about 400,000 people fewer than had signed up last year.”
It’s clear that Obamacare has been a catastrophic financial failure, so it’s no wonder that insurers have continued to flee the system. It’s damage to the economy over the last few years has been brutal and yet Obamacare stalwarts continue to blame everyone else except themselves and a poorly written, poorly executed law. How to fix the irrevocable damage remains to be seen.
