I was totally blown away. I literally asked for the website because I thought, ok cheap but, the services you get are probably scaled way back...nope. Way better than what I had at the time. I think what helps is, she's in a union and I think that has a lot to do with it. The other side of the coin though, she gets paid just a couple of dollars an hour above minimum wage.

You guys realize the employer portion is just part of your overall compensation? Like if they didn't have to pay that, you'd just bring home more cash.

As JediKooter indicated upthread, I'm not certain employees would bring home more cash as opposed to the employer just holding on to more of that money.

This discussion kind of makes me wonder why more business owners don't favor/promote M4A. It would remove massive payroll liabilities from accounts immediately, right?.

Last year the cost of the Employer part of my health care was $23,603. My portion was about $2500 toward that (which only includes about 7 months because of being broken, normally would be about double that).



There's no way that I would get a 23K boost in my salary, and even if I did, the tax bracket that I'm in would eat into it so much, that I'm not sure I could cover the value of that difference with the quality of care that I have right now.

So why would they pay a bigger portion than they have to right now? Why offer a 401k? If it doesn't lead to more cash in your check, it seems silly to offer any benefits at all.

I just know I'm realllly jeaolus of your guys health plans.

I currently pay just over $1,200 per month for my family of 4..and that's not counting what my employer pays. And its crappy insurance, but I work for a small family owned company.

I think whats missing from the prior examples is that when taxes are raised on employees they will have to be raised on corporations/employers as well to cover the cost gap. So the theoretical Comcast isnt saving $10k, they are liekly paying an extra 10k to the GOV (hopefully) to cover the cost ...otherwise there is zero chance of this program working

Its a confusing issue to me. On the surface, if healthcare is a universal right - and I and I think most think it is - then we streamline the process and eliminate a lot of costs simply by eliminating the insurance industry. An that seems to be for the greater good.

I'm less certain about the idea of a government just removing/replacing an entire industry because they feel their services are "necessary"...my mind tries to alagize it as...most Americans drive, most cars need fuel, maybe GOV should just take over all gas stations and eliminate gas station owner profits. Not a perfect comp to be sure but some what relative, at least in my mind.

I just hope smarter people than I can find a way to re-work and improve our healthcare system.

Personally, I wouldn't cry a single tear for the folks at the top who profit from the health insurance industry. All of the displaced workers is probably a real issue, but I think in terms of society available and affordable healthcare takes precedence over maintaining job numbers.

I'd like to believe the amount of advertising all flavors of the insurance industry are involved in speaks to how much money could be saved by cutting them out of the process.

Similarly, I worked in a healthcare billing office for a little while (which was a soul-sucking job) and there are probably tens of thousands of people in every state, working inside the providers, billing individuals & their insurance....I'd like to believe most of that is fat/cost that can be cut from the provider side, if there were a public system. Those are savings only achieved by significantly cutting workers & jobs, though.

What people are forgetting here is that companies get a tax break to provide insurance. Employer-paid premiums for health insurance are exempt from federal income and payroll taxes. So, if a company pays $14K and the person pays $5K (like most big companies) - part of the reason they pay for that $14K is because it lowers their taxable income. Just moving that $14K over to the employee in salary would cause the company to lose money. The "best" case would be the employee gets the post-tax amount as a raise. I just don't see that happening with many companies though. For most employees, their focus is on take-home pay. If you removed employer sponsored health care tomorrow, most people's take home check would go up the $100-$200 they were paying for their piece of the employer sponsored health care. So people actually think they will then go and given another $400+ raise because they no longer pay for health coverage? Come on, people can't be that naive.

Let's take the most optimistic view using Quik's example from the prior page of the $60K worker who's employer coverage cost $10K. She gets the best raise possible (79% of the 10K) and now makes $67.9K. Her taxes go from 20-27% so that costs her $18.3K ($6K more than the $12K from before). So, her net pay goes from $48K to $49.6K, but her health insurance probably isn't nearly as good as the coverage she had with her employer. That's the "best" case. Now let's look at the middle case. Let's say she would get a 7% raise and now would make $64.2K. Her tax bracket would increase to the 27% and her tax bill would go from $12K to $17.3K. Her net take home would drop from $48K to $46.9K, she would have worse health insurance. The worst case (which I think would happen for most people) would be she gets no raise, but has to still pay 27% in taxes. Her take home would drop from $48K to $43.8K and she would have worse insurance.

Can you see why people who have employer-subsidized care are scared of this process? If your take home pay drops 7-9%, your coinsurance drops and your deductible goes up - that's a massive pay hit to many working families.

For two main reasons:
1. They get a pretty hefty tax break for covering employees as I outlined above. So, it doesn't really "cost" them the benefit cost.
2. They have some insurance (pun intended) on if health issues hit their employees. If an employee has no coverage and gets in a massive accident/issue, they will probably miss more work and probably not be able to pay the bill. Plus, most employer plans cover wellness exams, most prescriptions at a high rate and make preventive care a lot easier (for instance, we provide flu shots, Blood pressure/stress checks and other health services for free at work). Healthier employees = greater productivity

Going to a M4A plan means the employer now doesn't have the incentives to offer to help keep employees healthy and has to rely on the government. Again, if it ended up being a good system and kept similar coverage to what they were providing, no biggie. But, it's doubtful that would be the case (esp at the start).

Its got to be more than just the insurance companies. Its payers, providers and pharma/medical products.

I do think innovation and quality will be less (and also the stock market) in the near term as we reform those industries but well worth it in my opinion to get basic "universal" healthcare.

I think most plans for M4A involves increased corporate tax rates.

I don't know why she said this? Any theories?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/polit...ard/index.html

Indeed. So companies can offer these big heathcare benefits, while using those funds to help reduce their tax burden. If there was no tax benefit, a lot less companies would be offering generous health plans.

Neither your or quik's example are accounting for the employee's share of premiums, or their deductible.

According to Kaiser research the average worker pays health insurance premiums of $1186 for an individual and $5,547 for a family plan, per year, and the average deductible for an individual is $1573.

Two reasons:

A) It may be true. Gabbard is more pro-Russian interests than Trump. And there are a lot of internet sites and likely bots in favor of Gabbard. Far more than you'd think regarding a minor candidate.

B) If you noticed in the last debate, Gabbard decided to randomly go after Hillary Clinton for some silly reason.

I have NO clue. Seems absolutely Trumpian to my eyes. Not going on a podcast to make up Russian conspiracies about other Democrats at the exact moment those Democrats are in the middle of impeaching someone for appealing to foreign influence AND also in the middle of primaries seems pretty easy?

Like maybe not point the Russian finger at the fucking Democrat's process at this exact moment?

Completely agree here.

Premiums are pre-tax. I included them in my first post above. But, if you pay $3600 in premiums - that's $300 a month. After the pre-tax benefit, that's about an extra $225 a month. So, that would be needed to be added to Quik's example (and my second post). I think the point still remains, though.

For deductibles, it's probably a wash at best with the M4A plan. And when you combine the co-pay, co-insurance and other plan specifics to an employer plan - the M4A plan will certainly be much worse than most.

There are zero out of pocket costs with m4a, that's the point.

FWIW, if I thought M4A would continue to include deductibles, co-pay and co-insurance I'd be entirely wary of it too. It's hard to take your concerns too seriously when you don't appear to have put very much effort into them.

She (Hillary) has her faults, but, I've never thought of her as a blowhard like the well documented habitual liar that trump is. So, something tells me there's more than likely some truth to what she is saying. Nobody really listened to her when she raised the russian concerns about trump in 2016, so the why is maybe her trying to raise awareness before the ball gets rolling on it.

Plus she's not running for office, so that to me lends a bit more credibility to it. However, and this is a big however, the conservative pundits are going to have a field day with this and it's going to trickle down to trump and he will probably get blisters on his fingers from all the twitting he will be doing soon and is just going to spin it as another 'dem conspiracy to remove him from office' or some thing and his base will lap it all up.

Medicare for All Would Cut Poverty by Over 20 Percent

"The Census released its annual income, poverty, and health insurance statistics earlier this week. The summary report shows that 8 million of the nation’s 42.5 million poor people would not be poor if they did not have to pay medical out-of-pocket (MOOP) expenses like deductibles, co-pays, coinsurance, and self-payments. Medicare for All (M4A) virtually eliminates these kinds of payments, meaning that these 8 million people (18.8 percent of all poor people) would find themselves lifted over the poverty threshold if M4A were enacted."

So, you guys really think a healthcare plan with zero costs to anyone will *only* include a tax increase of 6-7% on people? That's insane. I was going with the "melded" plan of ACA plus a universal portion as a pseudo M4A (IMO, the best that could get passed). The pure no co-pay, no-deductible plan would have to raise taxes to double what we are paying now (at a minimum). I don't even know why people are legitimately discussing it - it is impossible to ever pass or pay for:

The High Cost of Warren and Sanders's Single-Payer Plan - The Atlantic


It may actually be tripling our tax liability the more I look at the numbers. Here are some of the common ways people like to mention to increase taxes:

- Repealing the Trump tax cuts (would barely make a dent)
- increasing the payroll tax cap from $133K to $250K

Those two would raise $3 Trillion over 10 years - you would need to come up with an additional $29 Trillion to pay for it. We would literally need Belgium/Netherlands marginal rate levels to get close to paying for this. I can't believe people think this is a possibility - no one in congress (not even most Dems) would vote for what would be required to pay for it.

So would giving every American over 20 a 3 bedroom house and free car. That would actually be cheaper than the pure M4A and more likely to get passed.

I think it's insane that innumerable supposed business people continue to absolutely REFUSE to account for the removal of an entire industry that makes a very good profit operating as only the middle man between the consumer and provider of a service. Shrug.

I'm open to looking for reforms and way to be increase who gets covered and improve the coverage for the poorly insured/under-insured. But going from what we have now to a system where everyone is covered with no out of pocket costs would bankrupt this country and not even be close to feasible.

So many changes would need to be done before you could even think about a system like that and people would have to pay OK paying 50+% tax rates. It's just not realistic.

I'm willing to cede that if you're talking about this very moment in time, but I also don't know how you could look at where we are culturally and politically, versus where we were 4, 8, or 12 years ago and not allow that the needle is moving fast.

I guess the opposite of that outlook is that while some progressive ideas have become more mainstream the needle for most of America's tax liability has been going in the other direction, which doesn't seem like a very sustainable relationship, one way or the other.

Small business owner here. This is not at all how progressive tax brackets work and is a commonly accepted fallacy and talking point.

I know you are just using rough examples here (and we are ignoring marriage status and there are some exemptions that can be lost at certain thresholds), but in this scenario and most others (and assuming the jump in bracket occurs with the first dollar of the raise), the 27% part would only apply to the $7.9K.

How do federal income tax rates work? | Tax Policy Center


Also, if you look at the range of taxable income brackets rates on the site, you can see that the income ranges are fairly large, so odds are pretty good that most middle class folks or married couples are not going to be jumping up to new levels with a 10% raise (and if they do, it is going to be a 2% jump).



And if there are any companies out there that are deducting healthcare expenses that are not planning to deduct employee wages, they are need new accountants (and yes, they will have to factor in payroll taxes on the raise).

Payroll tax is a pass-through cost to the employee. Employers aren't paying it out of the goodness of their heart. It's factored into the compensation.

Also paying more in SS means you get more when you retire. Sure it's not an exact ratio, but it's a nice bump in your benefits when you retire.

It dramatically reduces turnover and limits competition in the workforce. Your employer doesn't want you quitting to take a job for a few grand more with a competitor. It's much harder to do that if you're worried about your health insurance and the grace period at the new employer.

As for how to pay it, reduce costs. Most of the industrialized world pays far less than we do for health care and sees better results. There is no reason we can't cut health care costs like they do.

Capital gains should not be exempt from Medicare taxes. We shouldn't create this nook for wealthy people and decide their income deserves special treatment over everyone else.

Medicare tax should be progressive.

Should move back to a progressive income tax system.

We can also talk about cutting back on unnecessary military programs and such.

This isn't some novel concept. All these other countries have managed to do it. Let's stop pretending like it's never been done before.

Who knew health care was this complicated?

If you really look at Gabbard's history (and Jill Stein who she also said was a Russian plant in 2016), it absolutely does make a whole lot of sense. And here is why it is important to call it out now. If Tulsi does announce a third-party candidacy now, this charge is going to played everywhere and hurt her chances of being taken as anything but a Russian bot.

Profile: Tulsi Gabbard and Her 2020 Presidential Campaign

This one was from February:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...abbard-n964261

Why would the Russian bots back a Democrat fringe candidate for a third party bid if they already control the President? Why not back him again if they control him?

My guess is backing her could cause enough Dem voters to back her instead of the democratic nominee, thus increasing the likelihood of a Trump win.

At this point they really have no need to back Trump. The battle lines have been drawn. You either support him or you don't, I find it hard to believe very many people will shift sides at this point.

Because Jill Stein was helpful last time.

It is exactly what Clinton said. She wouldn't even be on all ballots. Just on ballots in states that a 1-2% change would make all the difference.

Never Trumpers (or those who voted for him last time but have soured) who might otherwise vote D. I’ve already seen cheers for Gabbard on my aunt’s FB feed calling her the only non-crazy Dem, and “you go girl!” because she speaks out against Dem ideas and Clinton. People who decry what Clinton said but will be the first to buy into any propaganda.

The Ross Perot effect

Yup, totally agree! Jill was enough of a 'fly in the ointment' to make a difference in some states back in 2016. Was reading more about her (Tulsi) this weekend and if what I read was true, I'm not really sure how any democrat or liberal could vote for her. She was lobbying to get a position in trump's admin and seems to poll pretty decently with some conservative voters. So, something tells me that there's more than likely some truth to what she (Hillary) is saying.

Having said that, I wasn't going to vote for her anyway, so none of this changes anything for me, whether or not is it is true or false.

I think it's important to be careful about the phrasing. Might the Russians be hoping for and trying to use their bot sources to promote fringe candidates who take support away from the Dems in 2016 & 2020? Probably. Do I think either Stein or Gabbard (or Trump) are a plant? No. Useful idiots is probably the better term.

Plant? Who knows.

Stein, though, went to Russia and dined with Putin and Flynn. I have no doubt she's tied into the 2016 fuckery.

Gabbard has met with Assad. She refuses to disavow Russian support. Or David Duke support. Or Bannon, Breitbart support. She's a dangerous character, hiding something.

The one small correction I would make is, she has disavowed David Duke's support. Tulsi Gabbard denounces David Duke, rejects his endorsement

She also has never denied being a lizard person or David Spade. She's extremely dangerous.

Gabbard also dined with Putin, along with General Flynn.

Somewhere Putin is smiling in having successfully planted so much doubt in our democratic process.

The word "plant" implies a manchurian candidate and think there needs to be much greater evidence than meetings & dinners. Is Tulsi and Jill Putin's preferred Democratic nominees or are they the means Putin thinks he can sow discord and confusion, quite possibly ... but that is a far ways from "plant".

Thanks for the correction.

You're welcome. The sliver lining is, she has plenty of other faults that you mentioned. :)