10 thoughts on “The Truly Bizarre Structure of ObamaCare Health Care Subsidies”
You are right. This is bizarre.
John, I think you have written that these subsidies would cause wholesale disruption of the labor market. I think you are right. To get a subsidy equal to half your income, people are obviously going to jump throught a lot of hoops.
The reason this is bad is that industrial organization will be determined by the subsidies and not be economic efficiency. And as adjustment occurs, people are going to be forced to jump through a lot of hoops, whether they want to or not.
This just appeared in Heartland’s Health Care News. Now I understand the issue a lot better:
As John Goodman of the nonpartisan National Center for Policy Analysis recently described it, “High-paid workers with employer-paid insurance will cluster in some firms, while average- and below-average-wage workers will cluster in others. Overall, ObamaCare will create irresistible economic pressure to restructure the entire labor market.”
Rich guys in the exchange get more help from government than poor guys at work. Strange.
Complication for the sake of complication?
Or just a recipe for unintended consequences?
Do you suppose the lawmakers were drunk when they drew this up? I remember a video of Baucus giving a floor speech in an inebriated state.
I think these tables are prima facie eveidence of a lack of sobriety.
I don’t think alcohol could do this. It must have been LSD.
Yes this
is market distortion and will have unintended (or intended consequences actually). One has to understand Obama as he is a political and ideological animal with a perverse world view and does not understand human nature and how people live. This bill is about political control over lives and social engineering.
We need to eliminate all the perverse incentives and create choice and competition in a transparent market with people choosing health insurance or not according to their needs.
You are right. This is bizarre.
John, I think you have written that these subsidies would cause wholesale disruption of the labor market. I think you are right. To get a subsidy equal to half your income, people are obviously going to jump throught a lot of hoops.
The reason this is bad is that industrial organization will be determined by the subsidies and not be economic efficiency. And as adjustment occurs, people are going to be forced to jump through a lot of hoops, whether they want to or not.
This just appeared in Heartland’s Health Care News. Now I understand the issue a lot better:
As John Goodman of the nonpartisan National Center for Policy Analysis recently described it, “High-paid workers with employer-paid insurance will cluster in some firms, while average- and below-average-wage workers will cluster in others. Overall, ObamaCare will create irresistible economic pressure to restructure the entire labor market.”
Rich guys in the exchange get more help from government than poor guys at work. Strange.
Complication for the sake of complication?
Or just a recipe for unintended consequences?
Do you suppose the lawmakers were drunk when they drew this up? I remember a video of Baucus giving a floor speech in an inebriated state.
I think these tables are prima facie eveidence of a lack of sobriety.
I don’t think alcohol could do this. It must have been LSD.
Yes this
is market distortion and will have unintended (or intended consequences actually). One has to understand Obama as he is a political and ideological animal with a perverse world view and does not understand human nature and how people live. This bill is about political control over lives and social engineering.
We need to eliminate all the perverse incentives and create choice and competition in a transparent market with people choosing health insurance or not according to their needs.