Our current system is that an employee purchases their health insurance via their employer and the premiums they pay are pre-tax, correct?

If an employer “dumps” and provides the employee with monetary compensation to make up the difference in loss of health insurance benefits, then it all becomes taxable income. Both the 25% that the employee is currently paying for benefits and the 75% that the employer is currently paying that may/may not be compensated to the employee.

I’d love to see what this translates into in regards to any increase or decrease in expendable income for the individual employee. I think it’s misleading in a way, because the employee might be technically seeing an increase in wages, but it’s taxed, then they are required to buy health insurance coverage. But I’ve not seen that put into any chart/graph form either.

They just wanted enough “cover” to allow them to present this as a
good thing” to the American people.

Is that your take on it as well?

In addition, the current CBO ACA report doesn’t address speculation about a phenomenon that might occur called “employer dumping”. Because of the way ACA is structured, it can actually be cheaper for an employer to stop offering insurance to certain employees, pay the penalty, and offer the employee a suitable monetary compensation to cover the difference rather than continuing to carry the current 75% rate of cost health insurance coverage that they pay for at the present time.

The McKinsey survey indicated that the phenomenon of “employer dumping’ could be much higher than the Dems had estimated that it would be when the legislation was being developed. If “employer dumping” is high, then subsidy costs could conceivably go through the roof. (This factor isn’t even included in the current CBO projections)

If the mandate stands, they have to either purchase insurance or pay the penalty. If they purchase via the public health insurance exchange (once again depending on income) then it is possible they will receive a subsidy to help pay for their insurance purchase. Subsidies would be available to people with incomes up to 99K per year (depending on family size). Basic cost for a Silver insurance policy via the exchange is projected to be $7,200 per year. The subsidies being allowed range from $0 to $6800 each.

Those subsidy costs increase in the costs of operation.

i didn’t know what to say so i thought i’d ask…

Just curious, but have you seen any comments coming from moderate to left websites indicating any blowback against Obama and the Dems for this?

It will also be interesting to note what polling responses to this might be. O-care isn’t exactly popular by any means, but this could increase opposition to it even more.

Now, if we can just get Reubs to take the info and run with it!!

When you read through the ACA report, do you remember the comments about “wages and salaries remaining stagnant”, “unemployment remaining higher than it was reported to be in 2011″? Under normal circumstances, this would point to decreasing levels of revenues coming in to the federal government. But the General Budget report shows revenue increases, primarily from individual income taxes, Social insurance taxes, corporate taxes, and off-budget Social Security taxes.

From what I can tell, and RMJ is probably in a better position to determine this than I am, they are utilizing a few provisions in the law to (1) reduce the number of people ACA will actually cover by 3 million (2) increase the number of people who will be without employer-sponsored health insurance by 3 million (3) shift more people into the Medicaid category rather than obtaining insurance via the public health insurance exchange (4) projecting increase in revenues due to increased collection of penalties coming from people who aren’t covered by any type of health insurance.

They’ve incorporated a few gimmicks into this report to make it sound less costly than it truly will be, just like they did in 2010 when the law was originally passed. And they haven’t incorporated any impact of potential employer dumping into the scenario at all, which could dramatically drive up costs.

Plus, the “cost savings” from Medicare and Medicaid that Liberals claim will save this monstrosity stem primarily from a supposed increase in coverage, comes from elimination of DSH conversions for the payment formulas for both Medicare and Medicaid. Except that if individual mandate falls through via SCOTUS, then the coverage won’t exist and the cost savings won’t happen.

Ask your liberal friend whether they’ve priced in the cost of the additional 4 million people who will not be getting employer-based coverage by 2016. That’s the sort of thing any true conservative would want to see accounted for in an estimate.