An unprecedented lobbying effort led up to the failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Insurance companies and Big Pharma spent heavily to protect their interests.
As reported in “Modern Healthcare,” 04/21/17, government lobbying disclosures revealed the five largest publicly traded insurance companies spent over $6 million total on lobbyists in first quarter 2017. To be clear, this effort was not to find a way to protect the public interest. Among other provisions to the Affordable Care Act, insurers sought to eliminate the annual tax on health insurance companies that funds ACA subsidies for low-income enrollees.
The insurance industry’s lobbying wave in the first quarter was dwarfed by the tsunami of the pharmaceutical industry. According to “Kaiser Health News,” 04/21/17, 38 drug manufacturers and trade organizations spent $51 million in first quarter 2017, a 25% increase over first quarter 2016. Big Pharma used 600 lobbyists in all. At stake are lower prices and increased competition.
America’s dependence on private insurance companies results in a large unproductive expense. While the administrative cost of Medicare is only 3%, private insurance companies have administrative expenses of 30%. Eliminating that unrewarding difference would go a long way towards covering more of the population at less cost. With fully 16% of the economy involved in healthcare, some regulation will be needed to curb abusive pricing practices and to put the breaks on runaway costs. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers will spend heavily to sway Congress otherwise.
There are, of course, other crushing expenses of healthcare: preposterously high malpractice policy premiums that protect doctors and hospitals against unlimited “pain and suffering” judgments; the drag on hospitals created by ER’s which are open to the uninsured.
Citizens must pressure Congress to act for the common good. More funding will surely be needed, and the public needs to decide whether it is willing to pay for all the benefits wanted. Ultimately, it comes down to how — and how much — we would pay for healthcare. The public must make it possible for politicians to do the right thing.
As we have already experienced with the ACA, young people tend to postpone insurance expense, betting on their youthful vigor. And, many ultra-wealthy taxpayers would surely forego a contribution and tax deduction rather than support illegal aliens.
The secure approach would employ tax reform in a plan that would curtail lobbying for loopholes while it funded basic insurance for the nation — Medicare For All (MFA). Medicare works (3% administrative expense), and it is well liked. The Gallup Organization polled insured Americans for satisfaction with their health insurance, and the winner is Medicare (75%), well above employer paid insurance (66%).
The country could move to MFA and leave private insurers to compete for supplemental policies, much as they do now. According to Pew Research (01/13/17), 60% say the federal government should ensure healthcare for all Americans.
Paying for MFA could be accomplished with a dedicated sales tax replacing the Corporate Income Tax. The public would understand exactly what it is paying for healthcare, noting the percentage tax on all consumed goods and services. If this percent reaches a ceiling of acceptance, the public will come to understand the need to curtail covered expenses.
The ideal form of the sales tax would be a value added tax, since it would be applied equally to imported goods as to domestic production and would eliminate a competitive disadvantage for American companies and workers. (VAT would also be subtracted from exports making US goods more competitive abroad. VAT’s are already in use by every US trading partner, so this would be a reciprocal tax policy. VAT differs from a retail sales tax in that it is collected at each stage of production; the percentage and tax is the same.)
Implementing a VAT sales tax across the board without exceptions would assure the broadest base and the lowest needed percentage. Any one exception would produce a clamor from lobbyists for various clients’ desired tax loopholes, ergo no exceptions means no lobbying for loopholes and “draining the swamp”.
The VAT sales tax would collect from the illicit drug trade and from illegal aliens, too; those individuals would pay substantial taxes as they consume goods and services. Unlike the income tax, the VAT will affect them equally. The consumption tax would apply to hundreds of billions of dollars of transactions per year and would reduce the percentage tax for the rest of us.
The consumption tax burden for the lowest incomes would be relieved through the Earned Income Tax Credit, and funded by a more progressive tax code that affects the uppermost income segments. Note, it is consumers who (indirectly) pay the current corporate income tax when their purchases make corporations profitable. Also, when considering the burden of the corporate consumption tax, it is important to remember it would replace the cost of basic health insurance premiums.
The concept of a border-adjustable tax had been a keystone of the Republican tax reform plan (see the Trump campaign’s economic white paper written by Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and economist Peter Navarro), but it was recently dropped from consideration due to lobbying pressure from the retail industry and importers. It would be smart for Democrats to seize the concept as their own (much as Gov. Jerry Brown did in 1992 when he ran for president). The idea of a VAT replacing other taxes has more recently been endorsed by President Clinton to level the playing field for American workers.
This healthcare solution is what we could have…if we could only break the stranglehold of corporate lobbyists on the Congress.