What concerns me is the absence of the root cause issues, cultural expectations and quality of life issues from open discussion in Washington. Most believe it would be political suicide, but we elect people to address the needs of the public and not the needs of their next election. The American public must be made aware of their role and to take personal responsibility for their actions in the mix. The only way to do this is through market forces, and hopefully responsible voting. For instance, provide individuals help in addressing poor healthcare behaviors and then charge them more if reasonable improvement metrics are not met. Guess I won’t get elected.

Goodman: “If you are prone to exaggeration, you could almost say that Republicans want everyone to have the same subsidy…”

This is indeed exaggeration, in the sense that Republicans invariably supplement their elegant fixed-value tax credit proposals by tacking on various other subsidies for people with low incomes or chronic conditions. Even assuming you can afford to do both, it’s hard to see the point of the core proposal.

Otherwise the generalizations seem fair enough. I only wish there were a third option.

I realize that we must play nice and “play the game” as if this were really about “reforming healthcare”, but it is pretty obvious that healthcare is a “straw man” proposal to get to the ultimate goal of control of the economy and public acceptance of central planning. And as you infer in conclusion, there just “ain’t no way” to reach agreement without one side completely selling out. Therefore this “healthcare summit” is going to be nothing but a posturing contest to see who can look the best on TV to John Q. – more politics as usual.

“The Left-leaning Democrats (but not the moderates) want to force everyone into joining comprehensive health plans that gouge young immortals to subsidize older, less-healthy individuals.”

It’s simply a way of disguising a tax. The difference in price between mandatory community-rated coverage and a risk-priced policy is a head tax. This is highly regressive, which they attempt to remedy by varying the premium with income, thereby turning the head tax into a graduated income tax. As you have already reported, the marginal rates are extremely high:
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/hidden-effective-marginal-tax-rate-in-obamacare/

Insurance rates will certainly need to be adjusted from time to time, requiring changes to the shadow income tax rates. This will require passing a bill for every rate change, or else delegating the power to set tax rates to some other agency.

I have no problem with community rating as a vehicle to subsidize high-risk consumers. After all, employer-based insurance has been doing it this way for decades. But using forced participation as a hidden tax scheme is a bit like financing the public school system by forcing everyone to spend their entire food budget on bake sale cookies.

Maybe it’s just me, but forcing people to buy an expensive product so that a small fraction of the proceeds can be used as tax revenue seems rather inefficient. As with the school analogy, I can live with the taxes, but please don’t try to shove the cookies down my throat.

NCPA should start a “No Cookies” campaign. You can put me down for a few bumper stickers.

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Need analysis like this & no spin by Congress-Why Repubs & Dems can’t get together #hsr by #JohnGoodman http://tinyurl.com/yzm7fdp