Lanhee Chen: Even conservatives have reasons to like Obamacare

Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of the signing of Obamacare, which makes it a good time to figure out where the law really stands. It’s easy to dismiss it as a failure. But here’s something conservatives should begin to wrap their heads around: For all of our consternation, Obamacare may be a blessing in disguise.


Make no mistake: The law still needs to be repealed, because it fails to deal with the fundamental issue of health costs, represents a huge federal overreach into health care, and raises taxes to support the creation of a huge new entitlement. But Obamacare also makes it easier, from both a political and a policy perspective, to move toward the kind of health-care reforms that conservatives have long argued for.


A few concepts animate conservative efforts to reform the American health-care system. Core among them is the notion that the current tax treatment of health insurance — where individuals acquiring insurance through an employer enjoy significant tax advantages over those acquiring insurance on their own — is problematic. It drives up health costs and spending, prevents the creation of a true marketplace, and inhibits the portability of health coverage.


Many conservative health policy analysts will tell you that the ideal health-care system is one where individuals effectively “own” their health insurance policies, are free to carry that coverage from job to job, have a variety of insurance products to choose from, and have greater control over and more information about the cost and quality of the health care they receive.


The biggest impediment to moving toward this ideal continues to be a tax code that sustains the employer-sponsored health insurance system. Any changes to that system have been fraught with political peril, because they would probably result in some displacement of individuals from their existing employer-sponsored plans.


That’s where Obamacare comes in. Beginning in 2018, employers offering high-value or “Cadillac” health insurance plans will be subject to a 40 percent excise tax, imposed on the value of health insurance benefits exceeding $10,200 a year for individual coverage and $27,500 a year for family coverage.


Employers will probably respond to this tax by paring back benefits to avoid it, or terminating coverage entirely and instead offering a defined contribution toward an employee’s individual health insurance purchase. Either way, the current system of unlimited tax benefits for employer-sponsored health insurance is ending soon — thanks to Obamacare.


This is good news for conservatives. Every serious Republican alternative to the law seeks to move away from the existing unlimited tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance and toward a system where that tax benefit is either capped or scrapped entirely, in favor of tax deductions or credits to help people buy insurance on their own.


That means Democrats will have a tough time attacking future changes to the tax treatment of health care, because Obamacare acknowledges that the current tax treatment is problematic. The Cadillac tax on some plans is part of the way that the law attempts to pay for the coverage subsidies it provides to low and middle-income Americans. In much the same way, conservatives want to change the tax treatment of health insurance to help individuals buy their own plans in a vibrant marketplace.


Also helpful to conservatives is the way Obamacare disrupts insurance markets and forces people out of their current coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7 million fewer Americans a year will have employer-sponsored coverage in 2018, partly due to the Cadillac tax but also because some employers will opt to stop offering health benefits. That limits Democrats’ ability to argue that Republican alternatives separate people from the coverage they already have — because it’s clear that Obamacare does, too.


Even the law’s health insurance exchanges, much maligned by many conservatives, lay the groundwork for a post-Obamacare conservative reform to blossom. The exchanges under the law are, after all, a highly regulated set of marketplaces, where only certain plans offering certain benefits may be offered at a certain price. They are also a mechanism through which Obamacare distributes tax credits to help people buy health coverage, and a place to create competition between private plans.


Thus, the infrastructure that conservatives would need to administer a tax subsidy to individuals for the purchase of health insurance is already there because of Obamacare. All that’s left now is to simplify the tax subsidy that’s provided and remove Obamacare’s regulatory burdens, which inhibit greater competition and affordability in the marketplace.


Of course, if conservatives are to make any of these reforms a reality, the U.S. will need to elect a sympathetic president and Congress. Thus, the road to replacing Obamacare with something better remains a difficult one.


So while it’s easy for conservatives to say after four years that there’s nothing redeeming about Obamacare, that’s not entirely true: If we ever get to real health-care reform, it may be thanks in part to President Barack Obama and Obamacare.


Lanhee Chen is a Bloomberg View columnist, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adviser to several Republican campaigns, including that of California gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign

This is to complicated a subject for our resident Tea Turkeys to understand.

Plus they would actually have to give credit to Obama for trying to get rid of individuals acquiring insurance through an employer enjoy significant tax advantages over those acquiring insurance on their own bullshit.

The single biggest misconception perpetrated by the proponents of the ACA is the confusion over health care and health insurance.

In most large Counties such as Harris County Texas, we had an excellent County Hospitol system that took all comers, whether you could pay or not. In short, nobody is "denied" health care.

What has happenned with the ACA is instead of paying for those less fortunate's health care through taxes, we now pay for it with increased insurance premiums. Guess which is higher. Much higher.

Ad to that a whole group of people who didn't buy health insurance because they didn't need it, ie, the younger adults.

In other words, President Obama, by fixing something that was not broke, has made things worse for everyone.

And why do I say it was not broke? Because the simple fact is nobody in the USA was being denied adequate health care. The "Demogogue in Chief" used his skill with a TelePrompter to sell a bill of goods that in the end has one goal, the takeover of the entire Medical and Health Care System by the Federal Government.

jackie s....
the same old crap from a teapublican....
I notice you did contradict anything mr. chen said....

Jackie....what was needed was something to bend the cost curve. Not sure if Obamacare fixed that but to say nothing was wrong with the old system just is not true.

The retirement of the babyboomers who did not pay enough in to account for their expectant medical cost is the basic problem.

Babyboomers are this huge population running through the system. It was a great thing while they were working as they were paying for a limited number of retirees. Had they looked ahead , they would have seen the problem.

They talk about not wanting to saddle the next generation with their debt...while all their actions saddle the next generation with their debt.

What they fail to understand is that it is a math problem. If say the senior class had 10 people graduating and the junior class had 300 people graduating and the 300 juniors decided to buy all 10 seniors a gift and the sophomore class had only 10 people graduating and the junior class wanted the sophomore class to buy each of the 300 juniors exactly wtf the bought the 10 seniors. The 10 sophomores are the ones getting fuc'd in this kind of logic.

This is to (sic) complicated a subject for dumbfucks like me to understand.

Plus they would actually have to give credit to Obama for trying to get rid of individuals acquiring insurance through an employer enjoy significant tax advantages over those acquiring insurance on their own bullshit. Originally Posted by WTF

FTFY.

Hey WTFagboy, here's how to get rid of those "significant tax advantages" - let's allow individuals acquiring insurance on their own to deduct their healthcare premiums and costs, just like employers currently do! Oh wait - that's not what Odumbo had in mind, is it?

Jackie....what was needed was something to bend the cost curve.... The retirement of the babyboomers who did not pay enough in to account for their expectant medical cost is the basic problem.... It was a great thing while they were working as they were paying for a limited number of retirees.... What they fail to understand is that it is a math problem. Originally Posted by WTF

Please tell us exactly what the so-called "Affordable Care Act" has done to "bend the cost curve". Fagboy learns a few buzzwords like "bend the cost curve" and he thinks it makes him an expert and gives him the right to insult everyone else on this board. Maybe he can tell us why tort reform and interstate insurer competition (two obvious cost-reducing reforms) were kept out of Odumbocare by Reid, Pelosi and Co.?

Your baby boomer analysis is completely off-base here. The baby boomer bulge is a problem for Medicare. Odumbocare isn't about Medicare; it's about fucking up healthcare for everyone else. Prior to retirement, baby boomers did pay into Medicare. They didn't pay into their employer plans, other than a share of the premiums. Employer premiums are based on each employer's work force profile. So if I employ mostly young people, my premiums will be lower than if I hire old retarded fucks like WTFagboy... Only an ignorant simpleton would reduce the entire Odumbocare mess to "a math problem".

I like all the theories (facts on the web), but I think it is even much simpler, if, you simply ask a single question. Do you think our incompetent fucktards in a bureaucracy hiring incompetent fucktard contractors can manage 1/6 of our economy efficiently and effectively?

Not to even mention it is our health in their hands, but I've never been able to say "yes" or not even a "maybe".

Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of the signing of Obamacare, which makes it a good time to figure out where the law really stands. It’s easy to dismiss it as a failure. But here’s something conservatives should begin to wrap their heads around: For all of our consternation, Obamacare may be a blessing in disguise.


Make no mistake: The law still needs to be repealed, because it fails to deal with the fundamental issue of health costs, represents a huge federal overreach into health care, and raises taxes to support the creation of a huge new entitlement. But Obamacare also makes it easier, from both a political and a policy perspective, to move toward the kind of health-care reforms that conservatives have long argued for.


A few concepts animate conservative efforts to reform the American health-care system. Core among them is the notion that the current tax treatment of health insurance — where individuals acquiring insurance through an employer enjoy significant tax advantages over those acquiring insurance on their own — is problematic. It drives up health costs and spending, prevents the creation of a true marketplace, and inhibits the portability of health coverage.


Many conservative health policy analysts will tell you that the ideal health-care system is one where individuals effectively “own” their health insurance policies, are free to carry that coverage from job to job, have a variety of insurance products to choose from, and have greater control over and more information about the cost and quality of the health care they receive.


The biggest impediment to moving toward this ideal continues to be a tax code that sustains the employer-sponsored health insurance system. Any changes to that system have been fraught with political peril, because they would probably result in some displacement of individuals from their existing employer-sponsored plans.


That’s where Obamacare comes in. Beginning in 2018, employers offering high-value or “Cadillac” health insurance plans will be subject to a 40 percent excise tax, imposed on the value of health insurance benefits exceeding $10,200 a year for individual coverage and $27,500 a year for family coverage.


Employers will probably respond to this tax by paring back benefits to avoid it, or terminating coverage entirely and instead offering a defined contribution toward an employee’s individual health insurance purchase. Either way, the current system of unlimited tax benefits for employer-sponsored health insurance is ending soon — thanks to Obamacare.


This is good news for conservatives. Every serious Republican alternative to the law seeks to move away from the existing unlimited tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance and toward a system where that tax benefit is either capped or scrapped entirely, in favor of tax deductions or credits to help people buy insurance on their own.


That means Democrats will have a tough time attacking future changes to the tax treatment of health care, because Obamacare acknowledges that the current tax treatment is problematic. The Cadillac tax on some plans is part of the way that the law attempts to pay for the coverage subsidies it provides to low and middle-income Americans. In much the same way, conservatives want to change the tax treatment of health insurance to help individuals buy their own plans in a vibrant marketplace.


Also helpful to conservatives is the way Obamacare disrupts insurance markets and forces people out of their current coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7 million fewer Americans a year will have employer-sponsored coverage in 2018, partly due to the Cadillac tax but also because some employers will opt to stop offering health benefits. That limits Democrats’ ability to argue that Republican alternatives separate people from the coverage they already have — because it’s clear that Obamacare does, too.


Even the law’s health insurance exchanges, much maligned by many conservatives, lay the groundwork for a post-Obamacare conservative reform to blossom. The exchanges under the law are, after all, a highly regulated set of marketplaces, where only certain plans offering certain benefits may be offered at a certain price. They are also a mechanism through which Obamacare distributes tax credits to help people buy health coverage, and a place to create competition between private plans.


Thus, the infrastructure that conservatives would need to administer a tax subsidy to individuals for the purchase of health insurance is already there because of Obamacare. All that’s left now is to simplify the tax subsidy that’s provided and remove Obamacare’s regulatory burdens, which inhibit greater competition and affordability in the marketplace.


Of course, if conservatives are to make any of these reforms a reality, the U.S. will need to elect a sympathetic president and Congress. Thus, the road to replacing Obamacare with something better remains a difficult one.


So while it’s easy for conservatives to say after four years that there’s nothing redeeming about Obamacare, that’s not entirely true: If we ever get to real health-care reform, it may be thanks in part to President Barack Obama and Obamacare.


Lanhee Chen is a Bloomberg View columnist, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adviser to several Republican campaigns, including that of California gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign Originally Posted by stevepar

stevebogey...Here is your Okoolaid link... http://www.bloombergview.com/article...like-obamacare

iffo....
thanks for the link....not sure why it was needed....
do you have anything to say in agreement or not regarding the article........

Fagboy learns a few buzzwords like "bend the cost curve" and he thinks it makes him an expert and gives him the right to insult everyone else on this board. ". Originally Posted by lustylad

lustylady the only curve you have ever bent is your boyfriend's weenie

lustylady the only curve you have ever bent is your boyfriend's weenie


Originally Posted by WTF

Stop deflecting tranny boy, and tell us how the ACA is bending the cost curve... or is that just another libtard myth and you're just another buzzword bozo?

The single biggest misconception perpetrated by the proponents of the ACA is the confusion over health care and health insurance.

In most large Counties such as Harris County Texas, we had an excellent County Hospitol system that took all comers, whether you could pay or not. In short, nobody is "denied" health care.

What has happenned with the ACA is instead of paying for those less fortunate's health care through taxes, we now pay for it with increased insurance premiums. Guess which is higher. Much higher.

Ad to that a whole group of people who didn't buy health insurance because they didn't need it, ie, the younger adults.

In other words, President Obama, by fixing something that was not broke, has made things worse for everyone.

And why do I say it was not broke? Because the simple fact is nobody in the USA was being denied adequate health care. The "Demogogue in Chief" used his skill with a TelePrompter to sell a bill of goods that in the end has one goal, the takeover of the entire Medical and Health Care System by the Federal Government. Originally Posted by Jackie S

That's actually not entirely correct. Harris County Hospital district is one of the more corrupt government agencies in Texas and has been trying to work back room deals with Memorial Hermann for years. Docs at memorial Hermann threatened to walk out. check your facts.

and get back to us with anything showing that people are NOT being denied adequate health care! even though you don't really seem to understand the difference between health care reform and health insurance reform.

On second thought, never fucking mind. The RWW zombies just don't get it and never will.

Whoever is stupid enough to think nobody is denied healthcare services when they do not have insurance is pretty stupid. I don't care what party you belong to. Sure in emergency situation someone could be taken to emergency and receive treatment to save their life. If that same person comes back a week later and needs a tumor removed or needs treatment for cancer he will be shown the door.

Stop deflecting tranny boy, and tell us how the ACA is bending the cost curve... or is that just another libtard myth and you're just another buzzword bozo? Originally Posted by lustylad

Evidently you can't read with a cock in your mouth. Would you quit twisting my words and then demanding me to explain something I did not say.

Jackie....what was needed was something to bend the cost curve. Not sure if Obamacare fixed that but to say nothing was wrong with the old system just is not true.

. Originally Posted by WTF

...The retirement of the babyboomers who did not pay enough in to account for their expectant medical cost is the basic problem... Originally Posted by WTF

What happened to all those dollars the boomers paid in premium the last 40 years, when they were not signifigantly getting services?

Its the insurance companies that didn't plan, not the boomers.