Posted on 02/07/2017 3:00:53 PM PST by Brian Griffin
Good Quality Health Coverage Employer Tax Credit
[President Trump has promised to improve health coverage and lower employer tax burdens.]
Employers who allow every qualified employee and
normally on-site, employer-managed "contracted"/"self-employed" person
with at least six months/$6,000 of employment
to sign up for qualified care and drug coverage (in the following calendar year)
may claim a tax credit of $3 against their federal corporate or personal income tax, but never both, for:
1. each qualified employee who received qualified care and drug coverage from the employer for a week and paid no more than $10 per week for it
2. each qualified employee who received qualified care and drug coverage from the employer for a week and paid no more than $25 per week for it
3. each $50 up to 40 per calendar year added to an HSA or FSA of a qualified employee or the employee's spouse, domestic partner, parent or child
up to 50% of their total FICA tax amount.
[The $10/week is intended to catch full-timers, the $25 per week is intended to catch part-timers.]
[The tax credit amount per hour of work averages out to be about the same.]
[The maximum tax credit amount per employee is about $433/year.]
[Subsidizing the employer is probably cheaper than subsidizing the employee.]
[This tax credit is to make it preferable to employers to include low-cost health coverage as compensation and to promote that fact.]
An qualified employee was a person who was:
a. always paid at least US federal minimum wages by the employer for work during the week and
b. subject to FICA tax withholding under US law for the week and
c. a genuine employee directly employed by the employer and
d. paid at least $200 for the week if in a live-in or blood relationship, marriage, domestic partnership a person with an ownership interest exceeding 5% of the employer
[That's to prevent small businesspeople from getting tax credits by employing their kid(s) for one-hour a week.]
Drug coverage shall be considered qualified for this section if it:
1. is PPACA conformant, or
2. costs the employer as least $15 per week per employee (in the calendar year(s)), or
3. covers, as lawfully prescribed and medically necessary/appropriate:
a. protease inhibitor(s), if available throughout the plan period at a total payor cost of under $200 for a 30-day supply,
b. at least one auto-immune recombinant drug, if available at a payor cost of under $30 per day of treatment level activity,
c. at least one recombinant clot-busting drug, if available at a payor cost of under $1,500 per course of treatment,
d. at least one long-acting recombinant insulin, if available at a payor cost of under $10 per day per covered patient,
e. at least one recombinant drug, under initial federal patent protection, for any covered person, in any multi-day treatment period,
if proven by clinical trial(s) to extend life at least three months for at least 30% of typical patients and
available at a payor cost of under $30 per day of treatment level activity,
f. at least one non-recombinant drug, under initial federal patent protection, for any covered person, in any 30-day period,
if proven by clinical trial(s) to extend life at least three months for at least 30% of typical patients and
available at a payor cost of under $300/30-day supply,
g. at least one other continuous/intermittent/short-term[<30 days] use drug, under initial federal patent protection, for any covered person, in any multi-day treatment period,
available at a payor cost of under $5/$8/$15 per day of treatment level activity,
and a 30-day dated purchase order for one prescribed drug during the plan term will be provided when medically necessary to the covered person at the maximum payor cost less 20%, if the drug is not available to the payor at or below the listed maximum cost, or
4. is/includes a Medicare Part D copy plan, or
5. is/includes a Medicare Part D sourced plan, or
6. is/includes a plan offer/drug maker acceptance plan.
Care coverage shall be considered qualified if it:
1. is PPACA conformant, or
2. (and dental coverage) cost the employer as least $50 per week per employee in the calendar year(s), or
3. has an in-network care scope factor of at least 80 and a patient financial quality factor of at least 80.
My full proposal is at: http://www.freerepublic.com/~briangriffin/index
No tax benefits to employers. no different tax treatment of medicine form any other business. Any tax”benefits” simply raise the cost of medicine to those who do not qualify for the benefit and raise it overall to pay the bureaucrats who administer it. The Federal government needs to be totally removed from medicine and insurance. It has no Constitutional mandate to be involved in either beyond guaranteeing weights and measures and, perhaps derivatively, truth in advertising. ALL government involvement raises the price and diminishes access.
Your last one was such a mess I’m not bothering
“the cost of medicine”
If you can cut the cost even 5%, Aetna will be glad to have met you.
“The Federal government needs to be totally removed from medicine”
So can I assume Article I, Section 8 patents for drugs are out?
Those 100% Constitutional patents are responsible for about 80% of the pre-PPACA pre-existing condition exclusions.
“Your last one was such a mess I’m not bothering”
Hillarycare will be simple - they get - you pay.
No stinkin’ 80% federal subsidy limit like my plan has.
“pay the bureaucrats who administer it”
My plan is designed to be run mainly by computers.
Subsidies are computed using federal tax information (and state computer-supplied birth certificate and unemployment filing information).
One person can set up and administer a drug coverage plan covering millions.
How?
One rule- no appeals allowed.
No appeals - no appeal bureaucrats.
Leave the government out of it! Any government designed and run, or merely legislated requirements, system MUST be tinkered with for this constituency and that and there is always the pressure for “fairness.” Prices will go continually up and access will continually decline. A purely market system must bring the prices down for everybody. Insurance will return to its place as insurance instead of what it had grown into a prepaid continuing health plan that supported hordes of bureaucrats and the Insurance industry on the medical dollar which necessarily had to thus boost prices. The current iteration of “insurance” treats all cases as catastrophic coverage because routine care which it suposedly “covers” cannot be accessed before the user has impoverished himself with deductibles that price a large segment of the middle class out of the market for medical care altogether. Actual catastrophic coverage insurance should only cost a few hundred dollars a year and is all the insurance people would need in a market syste. The goal is NOT for everyone to be “covered.” It is for the maximum number of people to be able to access medical care on their own dime. Those who don’t have that dime will be cared for the way things were done before the current government monstrosity i.e. charity. Charity arises to fill such needs and fades when it is pushed out of the market by faux government competition. In a mandatory insurance regime the poor still cannot get adequate medical services because doctors don’t want to deal with money losing work and ER medicine is much lower quality than would otherwise be the case.
Patents for drugs are in the Constitution and are part of Patent law. Patents without other government interference ensure that the originating company can pay for its research. It is not directly related to medicine insofar as it governs inventions generally. Any detailed system, no matter how rationally and carefully thought out cannot anticipate the market and must have the same end- raised prices and less access.
Costs cannot bereduced in a government mandated system. The market will reduce prices. The action of the market, hampered as it is can be seen at many a doctor’s office- offer to pay cash for a lower price. Go offshore now and pay for your bypass plus airfare and a nice hotel for much less than the operation is priced at in the USA in a modern and probably safer facility. The doctors you will meet there are often the ones who are even now fleeing the American mess and who have already fled the British and Canadian horrors, the best of the bunch.
“charity”
That worked until about 1910.
“insurance”
By 1930, teachers, who still had jobs, ran up large unpaid bills at Baylor Hospital.
A hospital administrator, a former school administrator, saw the names of teachers on the unpaid bills list.
He created what became the Blue Cross insurance system.
Modern medical care in 2017 costs a lot more than the simple medicine of 1930.
“The market will reduce prices”
My plan is the most market-oriented that I know of that will keep people alive.
How many would die as a result if the plug was pulled on the PPACA without a replacement?
0?
2?
500+?
5,000+?
I am not saying ban insurance. I am saying let the market operate. Insurance will be cheaper and people buy what they need. I think it is interesting that many on FR, a Conservative site, cannot imagine doing without the government guiding and prescribing their lives. It doesn’t really matter. There will ever again be a time in which they will have to make any choices and will have to rely on a bureaucrat for their medical services.
You can buy whatever you want under my system that an insurer will sell you (except federally backstopped EMI coverage), provided your insurer meets state financial ability law.
You just won’t get a federal subsidy if you buy “junk” insurance.
Also, be aware that no insurer is going to sell me coverage for lung cancer for ~$6/month because that is its average risk.
My risk might be $200/month. So I’m not going to get lung cancer only coverage for less than about $220/month.
As you or I get choosier, the insurer needs to raise its prices for the items you or I choose.
Don’t expect a menu. Expect insurers to package their products like cable companies do.
Hospitals need to make their financial goals too. If you want the hospital to be in-network, the coverage you buy will almost always have to be broad.
“How many are dying because they can’t afford the deductible?”
Very few, hospitals simply raise their inpatient prices $5,000 so they can afford not to collect the $5,000 bronze deductible.
My plan tends to keep annual deductibles in the $1,300 to $2,000 range by cutting subsidies based on higher deductibles.
Note though that you can buy a $10,000 deductible plan via the exchange if an insurer offers it. It won’t be eligible for federal subsidy unless you pre-deposit about $7,500 with the insurer.
Can I get subsidies for a $20,000 deductible policy under my plan? Yes, by pre-depositing $17,500+ with the insurer.
Will you get a discount with your pre-deposit?
That’s a private contractual matter between you and the insurer.
“Go offshore now”
I took me two weeks to get a birth certificate($53) and then about 4 weeks for a passport($135).
“Go offshore now”
I took me two weeks to get a birth certificate($53) and then about 4 weeks for a passport($135).
My comment on “pre-deposit” was wrong.
I recently changed the rule so pre-deposit reduction is limited to $1,300 (~10%) for federal subsidy calculation purposes.
That would make plans federal subsidy ineligible when their deductible goes above about $2,000 to $3,000.
I’d like to see what happens before undoing my recent change.
I’d like to get a better return on my money by high-deductible/pre-deposit, but I don’t want PPACA-style high-deductibles that inflate hospital prices.
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