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Author Topic:   Republican Healthcare Plan
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


(4)
Message 85 of 187 (794553)
11-17-2016 4:36 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by New Cat's Eye
11-16-2016 7:21 PM


Re: Try reading what Trump said it has been on his website since March
Cat Sci writes:
quote:
A damn 40% tax rate. Fuck that.
Someone doesn't understand how tax rates work.
But before we get to that, the top tax rate in the US is 39.6%. So are you really complaining about an increase of 0.4 points?
Now, Tanypteryx has already explained that the amount of money you would pay in increased taxes would be less than the amount you pay in insurance premiums so you would actually be *saving* money, but let's go back to the original point:
Someone doesn't understand how tax rates work.
Yes, we have a top tax rate of 39.6% here in the US, but note the important word: "Top." We have tax brackets. When you find yourself moving into a higher tax bracket, that higher tax rate does not apply to all of your income. It only applies to the money you have earned in excess of the threshold to trigger it.
The lowest tax rate is 10%, but it only applies to the first $9,275 (single filer). If you earned $9,275, you'd owe $928 in taxes. The next tax bracket is 15%, but it only applies to the money earned above $9,275 (up to $37,650). Thus, a person who earned $10,000 isn't paying 15% on the entire $10K, which would be $1500. They're paying 10% on the first $9,275, or $928, and 15% on the next $725, or $109, for a total of $1037.
The top tax rate of 39.6% only kicks in for money earned in excess of $415,050. If you honestly cannot afford to live on half a million dollars with that tax rate, then you are in need of some serious guidance on handling your finances.

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by New Cat's Eye, posted 11-16-2016 7:21 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 88 by New Cat's Eye, posted 11-17-2016 9:55 AM Rrhain has replied

  
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


(3)
Message 107 of 187 (794596)
11-17-2016 4:54 PM
Reply to: Message 88 by New Cat's Eye
11-17-2016 9:55 AM


Re: Try reading what Trump said it has been on his website since March
Cat Sci responds to me:
quote:
My employer would be saving money and I would be losing money.
Someone doesn't understand how insurance works.
Your employer isn't paying for your insurance. You are. All of it. The premiums are paid out of your compensation package for your labor. If the expense that your compensation is being paid for isn't there anymore, then it is owed to you.
If your employer is gouging you out of your compensation package, you need to talk to your employer. The reason your employer is providing you health coverage is because they're getting a tax break out of it and that they would have a hard time hiring people if they didn't provide health insurance.
The health insurance is a benefit negotiated as part of your compensation package. That's why the Hobby Lobby decision was such a moronic result: Your employer doesn't get to tell you what you do with your money. And let me repeat this: Your employer does not pay for your insurance. You are. All of it.
Suppose you want to pay for your healthcare. You could go it alone, but unless you are exceedingly wealthy, there will be a point where your medical costs exceed your ability to pay. Thus, you may decide to put some money away into a fund to be used for paying healthcare. You'll invest it so that it can grow bigger and you'll be able to pay for more expensive treatment and such.
But you'll still probably not have enough. So you may decide to talk to your friends and you can all pool your money together. This will allow you to leverage economies of scale and make more lucrative investments than you would have been able to achieve had you stayed alone.
But now you have to decide how to manage this fund. After all, when it was just your money, you could decide to raid your healthcare fund to pay for repairs to the roof or your kid's college tuition. When you're dealing with a fund that has other people involved, you don't want them raiding the fund for something that isn't what the fund is supposed to be for. And you'll have to decide what happens when someone wishes to leave the fund. Do they get to take their share of the entire fund and walk away? That can quickly lead to the dissolution of the fund if enough members decide to walk.
And thus, you might decide that the fund is its own separate entity. When pay your premium, you aren't as much "paying into the fund" as you are paying for *access* to the fund. The amount of your premium will be based upon your expected need to draw from it, yes, but that's the cost of maintaining the fund. When you decide to leave, you don't get to have access to it, you don't get any of your premiums back, there is no prorating of your payments. You weren't paying into the fund but rather for access to it.
And that's how insurance works. The insurance company owns the fund and your premium is to gain access to their fund to pay for your healthcare.
Now, group policies help to maintain the cost of that access. If it's just you seeking to gain access to that fund, it's going to be expensive. You are bearing all the risk of your potential need to draw upon it. By joining together with others, you can distribute that risk so that you don't need to pay so much. But where to find others who want to go in with you to buy access to the fund?
And that's where your employer comes in. They can provide the insurance company with a group of people (thus, "group insurance") who will combine their payments together. Depending upon the policy in question and how your employer wants to manage it, it may be entirely covered (as it was for me when I was at Corbis) or there may be a base rate and you need to pay a bit extra depending upon your circumstances such as being single, married, kids, etc. (as it was for every other job I've had.) But that base rate needs to be paid in order to keep the group rate solid, regardless of whether or not you decide to opt into the insurance. For example, your spouse may have a better insurance policy and rather than use your company's insurance, you want to be on your spouse's so you'll opt out of your company's insurance. You still need to pay into it because it is a benefit of the company and the only way to keep that benefit for all the other members of the company is to pay for it. And who knows...if your spouse becomes unemployed, you're going to need insurance so it behooves you to help keep your employer's insurance policy something that exists even if you aren't using it right now.
But where did that money come from to pay for the insurance? It's not coming out of the employer's pocket. Even if your paycheck doesn't have any deductions coming out of it for premiums for healthcare, those premiums are still being paid for by you, the employee. They are part of your compensation package. That money has been set aside to pay for the insurance before it goes to you as salary. That's why if your employer-based insurance does have a secondary cost that you have to pay above the base rate, it's paid for with pre-tax dollars. That is money that you earned from your labor and you have agreed will be used to pay for the insurance.
So if that expense were to go away, if suddenly there were no private insurance but we instead had Medicare for All, for example, then your compensation package now has money that isn't being disbursed.
Where's it going to go?
If your employer takes it back, then they're gouging you and you need to talk to your employer. After all, you need that money to pay for your insurance. That you are paying for it through a "tax" and not a "premium" is irrelevant. The insurance needs to be paid for and that was the money that was being used to pay for it.
But hey, we're so used to employers gouging the employees that nobody seems to think that the employer should be ashamed to take that money back. All the productivity increases we've seen in the American economy for the past 30 years have gone to the wealthiest (Thanks, Reagan!) Wages have been flat. Unions have been all but destroyed. After all, it's because of unions that we even have employer-based insurance to begin with (before, most people didn't have insurance because it was simply too expensive. Unions bargained with employers to leverage the fact that they were a group to drive the cost of access to insurance down and thus, employer-based insurance was born. FDR tried to create a national insurance system as he understood, given the Depression, that you shouldn't have to have a job to get insurance but couldn't get the support for it.) This is why unions are so important: Even if you aren't a member of a union, you gain the benefits that they negotiate for. If the insurance system were to become nationalized and paid for through payroll taxes, you can be damned sure that the unions are going to demand that the money in their compensation packages that was once used to pay for "premiums" are to be given to the employee so that they can pay the "tax" used for insurance.
quote:
In the UK, the 40% tax bracket starts at roughly a tenth of that amount (43,001).
Someone doesn't understand the exchange rate. 43,001 is more than $50K in the US and before Brexit and the collapse of the pound, it was more like $70K.
And you forget all of the services that are paid for out of those taxes. For example, healthcare.
This really comes down to you preferring to pay $8000 a year in "premiums" rather than $4000 a year in "taxes," doesn't it? That word "tax" is such a bugaboo that you would rather pay twice as much in order to avoid the word "tax."

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 88 by New Cat's Eye, posted 11-17-2016 9:55 AM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


(5)
Message 108 of 187 (794597)
11-17-2016 5:02 PM
Reply to: Message 89 by New Cat's Eye
11-17-2016 9:59 AM


Re: Try reading what Trump said it has been on his website since March
Cat Sci writes:
quote:
I said that having the government in charge of something makes is more expensive.
That isn't true and Medicare is one of the great examples of why it isn't.
quote:
You responded saying how great Medicare is. Medicare is not that great because you still have to buy additional insurance.
That doesn't negate the fact that Medicare is more efficient than private insurance. And no, you don't "have to buy additional insurance." Medicare doesn't pay for everything and thus, if you cannot afford the out-of-pocket costs, you can buy additional insurance. But that's something for Congress to fix. The problem isn't Medicare. And it isn't because Medicare is more expensive.
Because it isn't.
quote:
Yes, that is the governments fault, but that is more reason why they suck at being in charge of something.
So which do you think is the better solution:
"Government can't solve anything so I'm going to elect people who also think that government can't solve anything who will do everything they can to make the situation worse (since "government can't solve anything") and then use that as an example of how government can't solve anything."
OR
"Government is sometimes the only way to solve anything so I'm going to elect people who also think that government is sometimes the only way to solve anything who will do everything they can to improve the situation (since "government is sometimes the only way to solve anything") and then use that as an example of how government can solve something."
It's amazing to me that people bought Reagan's line: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" And thus, for the past 30+ years, they have been electing people who think government is the problem, that government doesn't work, that they promise to dismantle government so that it cannot work...
...and then complain when government doesn't work.
Here's a thought: Why not start electing people who understand how government and public service works, who can actually manage such public works to make them function, and stop complaining when they actually do their job?

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by New Cat's Eye, posted 11-17-2016 9:59 AM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
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