More crazy taxation ideas from the AOC types…

[PCinSD]

[quote=FlyerInHi]The only claim I made about people from Mississippi is that they like to bitch about San Francisco. It’s an analogy about rural folks who like to complain about the “liberal elites”, who are really just middle class and not elite at all.

You can take my anecdotes at a face value or not. It’s but to you. They illustrate how certain people have bankrupt culture, vote against against their own interests and then bitch, but don’t look in the mirror when things turn bad.

My point was that I enjoy living in a progressive areas, and that’s exactly why I don’t live in what I consider deplorable areas. My point was that if red states policies are working, then good for them. I just don’t see it in the objective data about wealth… remember this is about money. There is tons of data on that. What I say is less crazy than calling AOC crazy. AOC has good ideas and good policies.

I have another young contractor, white dude, in his early 20s. From rural California. He grew up riding horses in a “wholesome” environment. Single dad at a young age — how lovely! Loves country music. Tattoos all over. I am also sure he does drugs because he cancels last minute several days a week. And when he works, some crazy girlfriend calls several times a day. No health insurance. He thinks Trump is fine. The guy does good work, however. I judge his lifestyle, but I appreciate the work.[/quote]

Right. So you are not going to produce data to support the factual claims you made about the fine folks in Mississippi? If you can’t produce data to back up the words you post here, then perhaps you should use different words. Or start with a disclaimer, letting the readers know you are making shit up. Otherwise we have no reason to believe anything you say.

Apropos of nothing, but take a guess which State was the 1st to enact 2 progressive reforms?

I believe if you started smoking opium and drinking heavily, you wouldn’t be such an asshole.

I’m a pilot too!

[FlyerInHi]

Rural folks are poorer, less educated and vote republican more often, today not in the past. Don’t need to produce data for that.

The first state to pass progressive reforms is irrelevant at this time. Progress and innovation are ongoing things. You can’t stand still and live off of past glory. That’s an entitled mentality. I told a guy that yes, he used to be a college athlete, but he’s a fat ass now, so better to pull himself together than use past glory to bludgeon criticism.

Economists have long argued that if your skills and industries are archaic, then you should upgrade or be discarded by change. That’s what we used to say about Soviet industries. Some industries in USA such as coal rightly deserve to die.

[ucodegen]

[quote=burghMan][quote=ucodegen]
Simple answer – yes.
More complicated answer – to a large part yes, presidents can also hand their successor a ‘time bomb’ – an example that many don’t believe is actually the ACA (aka Obama Care). Note that it was passed many years before it came into force, and it came into force towards the mid-end point of Obama’s second term. The time bomb part is the ‘sponsoring’ or ‘aid’ for those whose incomes are lower than a certain threshold (which is approx the lower 30% to 40% income threshold by population count). There was never any direct ‘line-item’ in the budget. It is more of a continuing ‘entitlement’. There are approx 300 Million people in the US (including children). If there is an average financial assistance of $300/month per person below that income threshold, that ends up being $3,600 per person per year or $1.08 trillion a year on what is basically unfunded mandates. I know that I was charged nearly $1,000/month for health care – no prior, no existing problems, on a bronze plan as an individual. That also means the $300/month average assist per person is probably not far off. Insurance costs jump as you get older.
[/quote]

That math makes no sense. ACA pays 100% of insurance for only a small portion of the population. It doesn’t subsidize everybody’s insurance. Yet you counted the full cost of every person in the country when calculating the cost of assistance. If you are paying $1000/month, you can’t count yourself in the cost to the government. Fake news, easily dismissed with a basic check of the arithmetic.[/quote]

Do a little better(more accurate) math. ACA pays a sliding scale for more people than you think, not just 100% for a small group of people – and subsidies are much larger than $300/mo in most cases. I averaged the aid to a ‘per person’ approx rate(one person with full aid at $1000/month and one person without aid = 2 people with aid at $500/month, one person with full aid at $1000/month and two people without aid at $1000 a month = 3 people with aid of $333/month). NOTE: I did NOT use full cost. Did you check what the threshold on aid is? Threshold on aid ‘was’ $54,000 in California about 2 years ago. Additional dependents can increase the threshold. The amount of relief was inverse proportional to income (not a fixed amount). Aid can rise up to nearly 100% of coverage cost. I am underestimating the actual numbers.

The ACA was done with two types of government ‘aid’.. one direct to insurance companies to keep the rates low(Cost Sharing) (Have you ever had to get individual or family COBRA insurance? = more realistic cost, no company contributing/covering cost) The other based upon family income and number of dependents. The plan was to artificially keep the payments low through the money going to the insurance company as well as aid for ‘lower’ income, so that people get used to the ‘ACA’. If the full rates (which it is currently getting close to) were applied in 2010, there would have been a revolt, outcry.. etc. It was built to be similar to putting a frog in a pan with water and slowly bringing up the heat to cook it without it recognizing what is happening. This is also why the insurance rates were increasing surprising fast. In about 4 years I went from low $300/mo to just under $1000/mo.

NOTE: of more than 10.6 million people who had added coverage through the exchanges early 2019 – 87% qualified for premium subsidies, and 52% of current exchange enrollees are receiving subsidies in 2019. Subsidies are for incomes up to 250% of poverty level (SD = $24,036 – threshold = $60,090 – 2 parents, 2 children). In San Diego County, 13.8% of population is below the poverty level.

Question: What percentage of population is below 2.5 times the poverty level?
Answer: Much more than you think. Median income El Cajon=$46K, Escondido=$49K, La Mesa=$55K… Median => 50% of population above median, 50% of population below median – definition of statistical median).

Sorry – not fake news…!!!

Refs:
https://www.thestreet.com/politics/national-debt-year-by-year-14876008

The ACA’s cost-sharing subsidies

http://www.sandiegobusiness.org/sites/default/files/Regional%20Poverty%20in%20the%20San%20Diego%20Region.pdf

@spdrun – you way under-guestimated the cost of the subsidies. Where are the refs for your numbers?

[burghMan]

[quote=ucodegen]Do a little better(more accurate) math. ACA pays a sliding scale for more people than you think, not just 100% for a small group of people – and subsidies are much larger than $300/mo in most cases. I averaged the aid to a ‘per person’ approx rate(one person with full aid at $1000/month and one person without aid = 2 people with aid at $500/month, one person with full aid at $1000/month and two people without aid at $1000 a month = 3 people with aid of $333/month). NOTE: I did NOT use full cost. Did you check what the threshold on aid is? Threshold on aid ‘was’ $54,000 in California about 2 years ago. Additional dependents can increase the threshold. The amount of relief was inverse proportional to income (not a fixed amount). Aid can rise up to nearly 100% of coverage cost. I am underestimating the actual numbers.

The ACA was done with two types of government ‘aid’.. one direct to insurance companies to keep the rates low(Cost Sharing) (Have you ever had to get individual or family COBRA insurance? = more realistic cost, no company contributing/covering cost) The other based upon family income and number of dependents. The plan was to artificially keep the payments low through the money going to the insurance company as well as aid for ‘lower’ income, so that people get used to the ‘ACA’. If the full rates (which it is currently getting close to) were applied in 2010, there would have been a revolt, outcry.. etc. It was built to be similar to putting a frog in a pan with water and slowly bringing up the heat to cook it without it recognizing what is happening. This is also why the insurance rates were increasing surprising fast. In about 4 years I went from low $300/mo to just under $1000/mo.

NOTE: of more than 10.6 million people who had added coverage through the exchanges early 2019 – 87% qualified for premium subsidies, and 52% of current exchange enrollees are receiving subsidies in 2019. Subsidies are for incomes up to 250% of poverty level (SD = $24,036 – threshold = $60,090 – 2 parents, 2 children). In San Diego County, 13.8% of population is below the poverty level.

Question: What percentage of population is below 2.5 times the poverty level?
Answer: Much more than you think. Median income El Cajon=$46K, Escondido=$49K, La Mesa=$55K… Median => 50% of population above median, 50% of population below median – definition of statistical median).

Sorry – not fake news…!!!

Refs:
https://www.thestreet.com/politics/national-debt-year-by-year-14876008

The ACA’s cost-sharing subsidies

http://www.sandiegobusiness.org/sites/default/files/Regional%20Poverty%20in%20the%20San%20Diego%20Region.pdf

@spdrun – you way under-guestimated the cost of the subsidies. Where are the refs for your numbers?[/quote]

There is nothing in that mishmash of statistics or anything in those links that supports your initial claim that ACA is a $1 trillion annual unfunded liability. The first link was about the overall national debt and had nothing specific to ACA. None of the links addresses the total cost of ACA or any debt created by it.

The overall national debt is a more interesting topic in these times. Why are deficits growing even with a strong economy? Because we have a president that is running the country like he ran all of his failed businesses.

[livinincali]

[quote=burghMan]
There is nothing in that mishmash of statistics or anything in those links that supports your initial claim that ACA is a $1 trillion annual unfunded liability. The first link was about the overall national debt and had nothing specific to ACA. None of the links addresses the total cost of ACA or any debt created by it.
[/quote]

The Congressional Budget Office says the ACA subsidies is costing $737 billion in 2019 and it will rise to 1.3 trillion by 2029. If you’re saying roughly 1 trillion per year for the next 10 years it’s pretty accurate.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55085

[burghMan]

[quote=livinincali]
The Congressional Budget Office says the ACA subsidies is costing $737 billion in 2019 and it will rise to 1.3 trillion by 2029. If you’re saying roughly 1 trillion per year for the next 10 years it’s pretty accurate.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55085%5B/quote%5D

Did you even read your own link? It’s about many federal healthcare programs, not just ACA. And it clearly says that ACA is only a small fraction of the $737 billion total.

In each year during the period, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program account for between 40 percent and 45 percent of the federal subsidies, as do subsidies in the form of tax benefits for work-related insurance. Medicare accounts for about 10 percent, and subsidies for coverage obtained through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act or through the Basic Health Program account for less than 10 percent.

The federal government spends a lot of money on healthcare, but ACA only accounts for a small part of that expense. Ucodegen’s original point about ACA specifically creating a hidden $1 trillion dollar per year time bomb is simply false.

Here’s a better article describing the specific costs of ACA:

https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-obamacare-3306050

The worst case estimate from the CBO is $1.76 Trillion over an eleven year period…an order of magnitude less than ucodegen’s numbers and much closer to spdrun’s numbers.

[ucodegen]

[quote=burghMan]
There is nothing in that mishmash of statistics or anything in those links that supports your initial claim that ACA is a $1 trillion annual unfunded liability. The first link was about the overall national debt and had nothing specific to ACA. None of the links addresses the total cost of ACA or any debt created by it.[/quote]
Did you look at the per year change in the national debt relative to that link and the timing of it(what year it occurred in)?

[quote=burghMan]The overall national debt is a more interesting topic in these times. Why are deficits growing even with a strong economy? Because we have a president that is running the country like he ran all of his failed businesses.[/quote] – Red herring, off topic. Take a look at what the addition is per year and who was in charge at the time. I do agree that the 2017 tax reduction was not a good idea, but that is off current topic, thereby red herring.

You choose to address only the first link but not the others.. and hope that it causes people to ignore the others. You also ignore the section:

NOTE: of more than 10.6 million people who had added coverage through the exchanges early 2019 – 87% qualified for premium subsidies, and 52% of current exchange enrollees are receiving subsidies in 2019. Subsidies are for incomes up to 250% of poverty level (SD = $24,036 – threshold = $60,090 – 2 parents, 2 children). In San Diego County, 13.8% of population is below the poverty level.

Question: What percentage of population is below 2.5 times the poverty level?
Answer: Much more than you think. Median income El Cajon=$46K, Escondido=$49K, La Mesa=$55K… Median => 50% of population above median, 50% of population below median – definition of statistical median).

How much of the total US population is below 2.5% of the poverty level in their area? Want to try a WAG on that?

Obamacare could have reduced costs, however it had nothing in the bill to reduce the cost of health care. It was hoping to do it through better health management but ignored what happens when you put a big pocket payer between the person receiving care and the entity giving the care. What was controlled was the profit margins that health care insurers make, but not the price on the health care itself, which is why generic medicine prices have skyrocketed.

By the way, on the reference to your article, take a look at the line under “The following five new ACA taxes would bring in an additional $567 billion in revenue” titled “Raising medical deduction limit to 10 percent – $104 billion”. How is that a tax? How does that increase revenue from taxes? It doesn’t. It actually reduces tax revenue because it allows people to write off a greater percentage of their health care costs, reducing their taxes – and thereby the money the fed gets from taxes.

The line item “Reduce Medicare payments – $197 billion” is not a savings because the medicare costs (that the payments were covering) was transferred to the ACA.

Finally, in all of the links that your article has, where are the links that actually support the contentions of the author of your article? The author has the quote “The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said that the ACA would reduce the debt by $143 billion”, but the link goes to a general discussion of what the CBO does. In other locations where the authors statements kind of match the supporting info, the link may go to the supporting CBO info.

I also note that your article says nothing about subsidies and cost sharing arrangements under the ACA. This is the big elephant in the room that I am talking about. A rough estimate using existing population demographics shows that what we are being told is not accurate, but is seems to get close to the budget deficit increase. This is why the ref to the budge deficit.

So here is one from the CBO.. take a look at ‘Major Health Care Programs’ under Outlay Projections – about half way down.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55331

If you look at the next graph down titled “Increases in Federal Revenues”, you’ll see that currently, the tax on High Premium Health Insurance Plans is negligible, though it will grow after 2026. This make the authors claim of current benefits from the tax questionable.

I looked through many of the other CBO estimates and found that they were, at times, really weak and potentially really off. Here is the results on repealing the ACA mandate:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53300
There is a claim that nongroup market insurance premiums would increase about 10% in most years.. so far a decrease is currently projected for this year. It is interesting to note that this is a 10% increase over 10 years when we have been currently seeing an increase of 20% or more per year under the mandate.

The actual costs of the ACA are a very sensitive subject to those who put it in place. The full effects are hard to determine as can be seen by the CBOs $930Billion, no $1.76Trillion, no $1.1Trillion estimates.

Your quote:

The worst case estimate from the CBO is $1.76 Trillion over an eleven year period…an order of magnitude less than ucodegen’s numbers and much closer to spdrun’s numbers.

May be accurate by 2026, however the CBO slides it through at $1.76 trillion by projecting the numbers to 2026. As of currently, it doesn’t look like it will make it, and is currently running over by nearly $1trillion annually. Again referencing the revenue portion from the CBO, which in my opinion are a bit optimistic.

[burghMan]

[quote=ucodegen]… which in my opinion …[/quote]

Thanks for that, but I’ll stick to facts and data.

[ucodegen]

[quote=burghMan][quote=ucodegen]… which in my opinion …[/quote]

Thanks for that, but I’ll stick to facts and data.[/quote]
Cute statement that does not counter what I brought up/posted.

[Author]

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