Thanks for the link, Arles, I set it aside to read a bit later.
Catching up on the rest of the conversation, we are now somehow arguing about the upper middle class entirely.
Quote:
|
People are leaving PPO/HMO for HSA "high deductible" coverage in droves right now.
|
People who can afford either a PPO or an HDHP/HSA plan and who are the least impacted by anything we're talking about here maybe leaving PPO's for High Deductible plans in droves. Someone who has been a teacher for 10 years and is now finally making $45,000 is probably not doing that.
The median individual annual income in the US is $33,517. Many of these are married and the median household income is higher near $70,000. But that means that half of the households in the country are under that and now we're talking about larger families.
So 50% of the employed adults in the US make less than $33,500 a year. Those people are not setting aside $1500 spare income into an HSA and paying out of pocket for their first $1500 in medical costs before they can even get that benefit. I have no idea how easily a family of 4 making $50,000 or even $60,000 has the disposable income needed for this, especially given that a family deductible is more likely to be double-triple the individual one.
More middle class and upper middle class people moving to HSA's will raise the costs of PPO plans, as the risk is spread amongst fewer and fewer people.
In 2017, 27.4 million Americans still did not have healthcare coverage. This is the crux of the healthcare problem and HSA's will never help them, and in fact will hurt them as it makes the entry into any sort of HMO plan more expensive as less people use them.
That lower income group that will never be able to afford an HSA dis-proportionally impacts minorities. The bottom 20% of earners in the nation contains far fewer white families than average, and far, far more hispanic/latino and black families than their average representation.
The status quo is full of policies that hurt minorities, and further expand the unfathomable wage gap in this nation.
Like some others who have straight up said "the trump tax plan helped me so i'm good" - you don't need help. You are incredibly lucky to be in a position where you will be fine no matter what happens. Obviously you're free to vote in your own interests and to rally support for policies that help you. But once you're over $75,000 in income or so, virtually every policy that helps you hurts is going to hurt tens of millions of individuals below you, disproportionally black and hispanic indviduals.
I was going to respond to some other stuff but this is long enough
