Final tax bill details - sm Posted: Dec 19th, 2017 - 11:21 am In Reply to: Will the Republican tax plan cut exchange health insurance? - sm
I ran a Google search for "final tax bill details" and found many articles. This one from the Atlantic seemed well-balanced.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/final-trump-republican-tax-bill-promises-details/548603/
Regarding your friend...
The tax bill doesn't change Obamacare. It does repeal the individual mandate, starting in 2019. You will read a lot of breathless doom and gloom about the effect that repeal will have on insurance companies, premiums, and coverage. Here's what I've been able to determine will happen when the mandate goes away:
* Millions of healthy people who can't afford insurance, don't need insurance, and can't afford the mandate will drop their coverage. This will save the government $300+ billion a year in subsidy payments.
* Since these are healthy people, those subsidy payments were propping up the insurance industry.
* The mandate itself, though voluntary, also gave insurance companies some money.
This is where the doom and gloom starts... What will happen to insurance costs and subsidies when healthy people leave the risk pool? My take is nothing will happen. This is a longstanding problem with Obamacare. Either way, they'll have to fix it, somehow. Both sides agree it needs to be fixed. They disagree over how, as usual.
Regarding the expiration of cuts...
The tax cuts will expire in 10 years and it will cost the government less than $1.5 trillion over that time. They had to pass it this way to overcome the Senate filibuster from Democrats. (The same way Democrats passed Obamacare.) If Republicans change the rules, get some Dems to go along with them, or get 60 seats in 2018, they'll be able to make the cuts permanent.
Regarding nursing home care and Medicaid...
The tax bill doesn't change any of those provisions. They'd have to pass other laws to cut those programs. You can still worry about that happening, but this tax bill won't do it. If costs increase and they aren't covered by increased revenue, the government will just borrow more money from China. (I used to be worried about that, but the national debt increased, on average, by $1 trillion a year under Obama and nothing horrible happened.)
Hopefully, I've answered your questions without being too partisan.
LINK/URL: Final tax bill details
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