What the ‘Cadillac Tax’ Accomplishes–and What Could Be Lost in Repeal
24th July 2015
To limit the growth of health-care spending, and to help subsidize insurance for low-income Americans, the Affordable Care Act took a step toward limiting this tax break. Beginning Jan. 1, 2018, the law levies a hefty excise tax on health insurance plans worth more than $27,500 per family or $10,200 per individual (with some adjustments to thresholds to be made for hazardous jobs such as those in law enforcement or construction and other factors). This has been dubbed the “Cadillac tax.” (For details, see this Cigna summary or this Health Affairs policy brief.)
Once again, a Voice of the Crust shakes a finger at those who are spending money on things that the Crust would prefer it not be spent on.
Consider the concept of employer-paid-for health care, which the author admits was a market response to a Typical Government Stupidity, wage and price controls during WWII. (Funny how many of today’s ‘crises’ are the result of Typical Government Stupidity in times past. Don’t get me started on the Fourteenth Amendment.) Whenever one finds a separation between who pays for the service and who receives the service, you get the following: People grabbing all the service that they can (after all, they’re not paying for it); service providers thinking up ever more new and original ways of providing services that they can hoodwink the recipients and the payers into consuming; and tedious acres of articles by simple-minded pundits about how something, SOMETHING must be done.
The answer, of course, is simple: People pay for their own health care. That allows the market to do what it does best, i.e. set prices and clear the market for a particular service. But the Crust doesn’t like simplicity, because it doesn’t serve their agenda.
July 30th, 2015 at 09:18
So the rich live and the poor die. A simple, if not very humane, form of “death panel”, decided by The Market instead of other people.