Here are two examples:
Net investment income tax:
Also, there’s a Medicare surtax:
The 0.9% surtax is an additional Medicare tax (levied on top of the Medicare tax you paid before Obamacare) and applies to wages and self-employment income above $250,000 per couple or $200,000 for a single. (This description is from Forbes)
(To clarify, the ACA was funded not only by other taxes, but by other cuts/savings, as well.)
Outstanding. Thanks. Good to know the filthy rich are bearing the brunt.
And I totally resent you asking me–in May of 2018–to waste my time substantively proving that Donald Trump said something dumb, wrong, and dishonest about healthcare policy. 
I sincerely apologize madam. I assure you that was not my intent.
Just the GOP part.
Yeah, and the whole framing of SS as a just another investment plan is misleading–and has long been a component of attempts to get rid of it. Lots of us have fallen into looking at it that way, no doubt, myself included. (Okay, I am going to try avoid high jacking my own thread with this.)
Open enrollment periods can serve a similar purpose. The individual maker will shrink and the pool will be sicker, making for higher rates, but as long as people still need insurance and as long as the subsidies exist for most people in that market, there will be someone to cover them.
One workaround that states have used in response to ACA sabotage–in this case, the end of the CSRs–is “silver loading”:
If the administration does cut off the CSRs, some states will add a surcharge onto certain plans to cover the cost of losing those payments.
California, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, for example, say they will increase the cost of all the mid-level “silver” health plans that consumers can buy on the exchange.
The idea is that by making the silver plans more expensive, the other plans will be cushioned from the price increase. If the price of a silver plan increases, tax credits that help customers purchase insurance will also increase.
But states will have to educate consumers about why the change is taking place.
“Customers are going to be confused and [insurance] carriers will have to explain” why one plan is so much more expensive than the others, Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser to the executive vice president at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said.
So-called “silver loading” isn’t a new idea, Hempstead said, but if states decide they can’t wait for the administration to make a decision, it becomes “more and more likely this is the situation states are going to be in.”
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/346256-states-enter-the-breach-to-protect-obamacare
Stick it to the middle class!
No. The middle class (at least what I consider in the middle class, but I’m never surprised at the type of wealth people would consider middle class) is already capped at a percentage of what they need to spend for their premiums. Any additional cost goes to the federal government for subsidies.
The deliberate cut-off of the CSRs (by the President, supported by the GOP) is responsible for much of the increase in the price unsubsidized plans on the exchanges. Silver loading is one of the (imperfect) workarounds to mitigate that, by the way. In any case, the wholesale generalization about sticking it to the middle class doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in this context: most people get their healthcare through their employers, not on the ACA exchanges.
CSR was always a weird solution to a serious problem. Cost sharing is a tough subject. Too high and people don’t get stuff done they need. Too low and they’ll do anything and everything. We need to rethink deductibles and perhaps go as a percentage of disposable income or something. Just a thought, may be more harm than good.
Well, we can take lots of comfort that the people currently charge really know what they’re doing, understand healthcare policy, and think rationally about questions like yours.
That’s always been one of the weird ironies of the Trump/GOP approach: create a situation where a significant number of premiums rise . . . and then the subsidies rise along with them.
There is no insurance company that would agree to insure people over the age of 65 without charging a fortune that almost no one would be able to afford. That’s why we have Medicare to begin with. No one was willing to insure them.
Mind boggling, no?
No way. Let’s get the government out of it.
I know that my 98 year old grandmother wants her healthcare to be a Randian, free-market adventure!
At first I thought some benign neglect from this administration would have been okay, just let the law work. Unfortunately they couldn’t help themselves.
As you pointed out, some states can take actions to mitigate the problems at the top, but that’s creating discrepancies between the states and affects the public view of the law.
Well that’s simply not true.
I think it may rise to the level of “not even wrong.”
