You don’t have to drive a car thus there is no requirement to purchase auto insurance. So that isn’t a good example when comparing to mandatory health insurance.
There are incentives today to locate assets/profits offshore. There would be incentives with a minimum tax (on worldwide income). That includes the minimum average tax that is in current bill. But with a lower delta (which results from reduction of corporate tax rate), incentives are reduced. So its a matter of picking your poison. Do you want incentives to locate assets offshore or reorganize to create US and non-US brother sister entities. Each to reduce US tax liability.
"Are you an economist that you know as much or have more expertise than they do?
The last time (2004) there was a repatriation of corporate overseas profits in a tax bill it failed to increase job hires or business expansion. Instead, they just did stock buy backs and increased dividends. This is exactly what is going to happen this time, too. CEO’s even admitted as much when asked by Gary Cohn. http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-plan-gary-cohn-bill-2017-11
In addition, the CBO and The Joint Committee on Taxation have said the bill will increase the deficit by $1 Trillion to $1.4 Trillion before the final bill (which added more tax cuts) has even been scored."
So what. What is their track record? Nobody can predict the increase in the deficit over 10 years. There are too many variables.
And there is nothing wrong with stock buybacks and dividends. Money eventually goes somewhere. The guy who sells stock in a buyback program doesn’t stuff the money under a mattress. He’ll spend it or invest it into something else. Think of the guys on “Shark Tank.” They have more money that god and are taking flyers with their money and creating jobs and economic growth.
"Anyone else remember the rhetoric and predictions from our last highly regressive tax cut and getting deja vu? It was 2001; the prediction we were being sold was that any immediate deficit would be temporary and the government would be sitting on vast piles of surplus cash by 2017. Yep, way wrong.
Given that we are getting a similar tax cut, I am going to trust the PhD economists’ prognosis for this one and not hold their horrendous projection for the last one against them."
Yep. And you had a couple of extended wars and govt. bailouts to boot. Certainly that drove the deficit more than anything. Who put those assumptions into their models?
These predictions always extrapolate from the past and assume the future will remain the same, and we know what happens when you assume. And the future is always changing. They can’t get stuff right only months or a year down the road, but it’s somehow reasonable to shout “the sky is falling” based on 10 year predictions.
Of course it does. But the ironic thing is that the politicos who argue for maintaining a penalty in the ACA are the same ones who enable hundreds of thousands of Californians to go without auto insurance.
What generally happens for example is that someone buys auto insurance on Dec 1, goes and registers his/her car at the DMV, and then cancels the auto insurance on Dec 2, obtaining a refund. No penalty, no loss of auto registration.
Put me in the category the auto insurance requirement is close to useless in some states. For example, in California, the minimum property damage liability limit is $5k. So if someone totals a new Camry or Accord, that might cover 20% of the value, and less than that if it’s fully loaded.
@Dave_N , for me the paragraphs bellow represent the convincing argument on why the individual mandate was necessary. Taken from RBG’s opinion in the ACA case. Apologies for lack of skill in formatting a quote (but don’t tell me how as I won’t remember going forward). Do we need fixes to this legislation to iron out the kinks? Yes and some bi-partisan fixes have been proposed (Murray- Alexander, etc.), but partisanship prevents implementation. Instead we are just going to make it worse through repeal of the individual mandate.
"As just noted, the cost of emergency care or treatment for a serious illness generally exceeds what an individual can afford to pay on her own. Unlike markets for most products, however, the inability to pay for care does not mean that an uninsured individual will receive no care. Federal and state law, as well as professional obligations and embedded social norms, require hospitals and physicians to provide care when it is most needed, regardless of the patient’s ability to pay.
As a consequence, medical-care providers deliver significant amounts of care to the uninsured for which the providers receive no payment. In 2008, for example, hospitals, physicians, and other health-care professionals received no compensation for $43 billion worth of the $116 billion in care they administered to those without insurance.
Health-care providers do not absorb these bad debts.Instead, they raise their prices, passing along the cost of uncompensated care to those who do pay reliably: the government and private insurance companies. In response, private insurers increase their premiums, shifting the cost of the elevated bills from providers onto those who carry insurance. The net result: Those with health insurance subsidize the medical care of those without it. As economists would describe what happens, the uninsured “free ride” on those who pay for health insurance."
@2VU0609, yes I understand and agree with your post.
What I was trying to show, and apparently did a miserable job of showing, is that people accept all kinds of regulations and fees in their lives. I was responding to the idea that it seems unamerican to have to comply with the mandate.
Societies have costs and benefits. We have to agree to disagree on some issues and compromise.
We basically had only two real choices. One company offered a variety of HMOs that were not all that less expensive but only cover 50% of hospitalizations and treatments (after huge deductible) vs. our current company that no longer offers the PPO we were on, but offers an “EPO” (still don’t understand the difference) for more premium and big deductible but pays 80% of hospitalizations and treatments, better drug copays. It’s just outrageously expensive, but what are we going to do?
Every year insurance companies drop out of the private market in Texas. This is literally the fourth year in a row that we’ve gotten the “We will no longer be offering this plan next year” letter.
If I have to, I can always go back to work full time, but I really don’t want to. Will re-evaluate that if our circumstances change.
We are on the same page, but people always attack the auto insurance example for the reasons stated previously,
i.e. people canceling after renewing registration. It’s true and not everyone has to drive depending on where they live. Ultimately, everyone (excepting a group so minute as to be immaterial) will require some form of health care in their lives and society can’t opt out of providing it, as pointed out by RBG. Your point about compromise is absolutely the key piece missing at this time.
I think repealing the individual mandate will force costs up and eat through any savings provided to a substantial number of those who see a small benefit from the adjustment in rates and the amount of the standard deduction. Even those who get healthcare through their employer will be hurt as their employers pay more for this benefit and reduce or defer raises. For many, this will be like giving someone bleeding out a band-aid.
A few differences between auto insurance requirements and mandatory health care insurance
Required by states, not by federal government (which is why the SC had to rule the mandate was a tax in order to keep it)
Protects others, not the insurance holder. It is liability coverage that the states require, so that you are required to protect the people you might injure. There is no requirement to protect yourself in most cases.
Auto insurance required when a car is financed is required by the lien holder, not the state.
A lot of people really don’t understand this, including, according to his comments at the time, the 44th president. But I expect people doing a detailed analysis of the tax bill’s affect on offshore profits to understand it, and wonder if there is some other reason it was thrown into the discussion.
Going without health insurance is something plenty of young and sometimes not so young people have done on purpose for years. It doesn’t mean going without health care, it means pay as you go, and use only what you choose or need at the time. There is risk, but life is full of risks. Driving to work is a risk. Skipping work is a risk. Many of us use very little health care for years at a time. It’s hard to pay $1K+ a month for the privilege.
I was a healthy person in my mid 20s. Until I wasn’t. Literally overnight I went from taking one cheap med to having thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of medical bills every month. No warning. No known risk factors. Thank every star it was post-Obamacare so my insurance can’t kick or impose yearly or lifetime limits. I will rack up these kinds of bills until I die. Pre-ACA I would have been insurable by 30 due to lifetime limits.
For the vast majority of young people, plans are cheap on the marketplace with subsidies. Unless they make below poverty in a non expansion state.
I’ll move on since this isn’t a health insurance thread. Just wanted to point out that the young invicibles myth is dangerous.
So far, I have not seen anything of substance, just a lot of hot air.
;))