Wednesday, January 1, 2014

BloggeRhythms

The new year’s starting out with considerable focus on the mid-term elections to be held in November. And naturally, much of the coverage centers on the disaster for Dem’s caused by the incumbent’s extremely unpopular health care tax. 
 
An article today from the washingtontimes.com/news by Tom Howell Jr. via Drudge, illustrates clearly why the tax creates problems for Dem’s at the polls. Yet many of them and their advisors, are either missing the point regarding faults with the tax, or purposely dodging the subject.   
 
Mr. Howell writes that, “Under political pressure, the administration said people who lost bare-bones plans because of the law’s coverage requirements could apply for hardship exemptions and acquire basic plans that cover only catastrophic illnesses. The move undercut the administration’s own premise — that low-level plans on the individual market were junk and that the insurance exchanges would provide better, more affordable coverage.”
 
Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health, a Washington-based consultancy said, “the move should have a “very small effect” because consumers are likely to find the lowest-tier “bronze plans” on the Obamacare exchange that are similar in price yet offer better coverage than catastrophic plans.”
 
And its comments like Mr. Mendelson’s that illustrate how and why the law itself is subject to self-destruction. Because it isn’t the cost that’s the basic problem, although it certainly has an affect. The major issue is forcing the tax on a significant portion of the public, young people, who don’t want or need the insurance at all.
 
As the article further points out, “Those who think they do not need health insurance have another reason to procrastinate: The fine for violating the mandate doesn’t have much teeth until the second year.
 
A single adult who flouts the rule in 2014 must pay $95 or 1 percent of adjusted gross income, whichever is higher. The baseline penalty climbs in 2015 to $325 or 2 percent of adjusted income. In 2016, it will be $695 or 2.5 percent.”
 
Consequently, even at the highest penalty rate, $695 or 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income in 2016, the lowest cost insurance plans cost thousands. Then add to that requirements for insuring against illness and/or medical problems highly unlikely to be needed by young people at all,  and the dislike of the tax will certainly increase as these unwilling healthy ones become aware of the costs for something having absolutely no value to them at all.
 
But in the end, it really doesn’t matter much what Dem’s or insurers try to do to defuse or disguise the public distaste for the tax, because too many voters are being harmed financially while others are losing access to practitioners they prefer. 
 
And that means the odds are quite high that most Republicans running for office in November will be gifted a landslide by the incumbent’s mistaken attempt to socialize a health care system that became the best in the world because it was built and run by capitalists.  
 
That’s it for today folks.
 
Adios

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