NYTimes--> Health Proposals by #Republicans Scott Walker & Rubio Are Less Concerned About the Poor
Articles talks about Differences and similarities
Health Proposals by #Republicans Scott Walker & Rubio Are Less Concerned About the Poor http://nyti.ms/1E1Te48 #Walker16 #p2 #Wipolitics
Health Proposals by Walker and Rubio Are Less Concerned About the Poor
AUG. 18, 2015
Margot Sanger-Katz
...........The similarity: Both embrace the notion that the federal government should have some responsibility for making insurance affordable for people who don’t get it through their jobs. The Walker plan, and a similar though vaguer plan announced by Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday in an editorial in Politico magazine, thinks that responsibility should, in part, take the form of federal money. Both Republican presidential candidates would give individuals tax credits they could use to shop for health plans.
But the Republican plans differ substantially from Obamacare in their vision of how the money should be doled out, and what it should be used to buy. The Walker and Rubio proposals call for a much less regulated insurance market, where the federal government exercises little oversight over the products in the market...............
One of Obamacare’s main effects has been to redistribute income. The law taxes wages, health insurance and medical devices, and raises insurance prices for wealthy, healthy people. It uses the money to subsidize insurance for people who are poor or whose health history made them poor insurance risks in the old system. As my colleague Kevin Quealy and I wrote last year, the law has had the effect of pushing back against income inequality. In addition to lowering the cost of buying insurance, federal dollars also reduce the out-of-pocket costs that low-income Americans now pay when they use those plans. But Obamacare has had more limited success in attracting higher-income Americans into the new markets.
Governor Walker’s plan appears to be less generous for many poor Americans. It would roll back the Medicaid expansion that has provided free insurance to low-income adults. It would distribute tax credits to those with private coverage on the basis of age, not income. Such a system would be far simpler to administer: Every person 50 to 64 would be given $3,000 to spend on health insurance, while everyone 18 to 34 would get $1,200. Older people tend to have higher health care costs, and are charged higher insurance premiums, the argument for the age-based subsidy system. But it means that for people without a lot to spend on insurance, a comprehensive health plan may slip back out of reach. For others, an affordable plan might be so bare-bones that it wouldn’t kick in before a major health catastrophe.....................
= new reply since forum marked as read
