James Kwak provides an enlightening analysis of the GOP argument that the individual mandate is an oppressive tax on the middle class. His conclusion:

In short: Very few people are even theoretically subject to the tax, and most of them are made much better off by the law, since they are transfer beneficiaries.

How can this be? How can a law make everyone better off? Well, it doesn’t. There is a tax-and-transfer element to the Affordable Care Act. The main people who are paying more are the rich (because of a Medicare payroll tax surcharge) and those with good health plans (because of the excise tax on “Cadillac plans”). In addition, the new spending is financed in part by reductions in Medicare spending; those reductions may or may not result in reduced availability of care for Medicare beneficiaries.

The Affordable Care Act is not painless, and there are definitely taxes involved. But the individual mandate “tax” is not one of them.

Of course, Romneycare wasn’t an oppressive tax on the middle class because the definition of ‘mandate’ is apparently different in Massachusetts….

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

President Barack Obama weighed in Monday on last week’s Supreme Court arguments about health care reform, saying he expected the justices to rule the act is constitutional.

“In accordance with precedents out there, it is constitutional,” Obama said of the 2010 Affordable Care and Prevention Act passed by congressional Democrats with no Republican support. “That’s not just my opinion, by the way, that’s the opinion of legal experts across the ideological spectrum, including two very conservative appellate court justices that said this wasn’t even a close case.”

At a joint news conference with visiting leaders from Mexico and Canada, Obama was asked about the three days of high court hearings last week and subsequent speculation that conservative justices would rule against the health care law’s individual mandate, which requires people to have coverage or pay a fine.

The measure is the signature legislation of Obama’s first term as he heads into a re-election campaign this year. Polls indicate the nation is divided over the issue on ideological lines, with conservatives opposing the measure as a government overreach and liberals supporting it as a necessary overhaul of the health insurance system.

Obama on Monday framed the issue as one affecting everyone rather than an “abstract argument.”

“People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of health care, the inaffordablity of health care, their inability to get health care because of pre-existing conditions,” Obama said, later adding: “Americans all across the country have greater rights and protections with respect to their insurance companies and are getting preventive care because of this law.”

In addition, the president noted, 30 million people will gain coverage when the individual mandate and the rest of the law are fully implemented in 2014.

“I think it’s important and I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with pre-existing conditions can actually get health care,” Obama said. “So, there’s not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this, but there’s a human element to this and I hope that’s not forgotten in this political debate.”

Obama said he was confident the Supreme Court “will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law” passed by Congress.

Read more at CNN…

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

The US supreme court confronted what one justice characterised as a choice between a “wrecking operation” and a “salvage job” as it considered the future of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reforms if a key component is found to be unconstitutional.

In a third and final day of an unusually long hearing Wednesday on the politically charged legislation, the court heard from its opponents that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be struck down if, as looks possible, the justices find a requirement for almost all Americans to buy medical insurance to be unconstitutional.

Paul Clement, acting for 26 US states that oppose the legislation, said that the requirement for mandatory insurance is designed to fund many of the law’s other reforms. He said that without the funding, they are unworkable.

“If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, then the rest of the act cannot stand,” said Clement.

The government acknowledged that the loss of the insurance requirement will make some other parts of the legislation unworkable. It said that the loss of funds from about 40 million more people paying insurance would cause the collapse of some new requirements, such as a bar on insurance companies turning away people with pre-existing conditions. But it argued that most of the hundreds of other provisions of the act could remain.

Read more at the Guardian…

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below: