The News Hour - Jon Gruber & Josh Bivens on health care - the so-called

[slipslidingaway]

Run time: 08:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m3yOh0sPfU   Posted on YouTube: January 12, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: January 12, 2010 By DU Member: slipslidingaway Views on DU: 1072

 

[berni_mccoy]

1. Bivens denies the HCR Bill is a giveaway to insurance, says he would not call it that.

[slipslidingaway]

11. Sorry, I missed that part. n/t

[beachmom]

2. I watched this last night and found it an insightful debate where the two

agreed on many things. Clearly, Josh Bivens is not going to be a hero for the FDL crowd even though they have been touting the study his group did as undercutting Gruber's case on the excise tax. The nuance in this debate shows their simplistic reading of the report is wrongheaded.

[berni_mccoy]

3. FDL is wrongheaded... in more ways than one.

[slipslidingaway]

12. Of course you take a shot a FDL n/t

[slipslidingaway]

10. Bivens does not agree with Gruber and thinks there are better avenues. n/t

[thesquanderer]

4. another request to please post SUMMARIES when posting a video link

for hearing impaired, for people who must use the web silently while at work or in libraries, for people with slow dial-up connections, or who just don't want to take the time to get into a video with no idea why it is that they might want to watch it.

[slipslidingaway]

5. Here is the transcript link, sorry and thanks for the reminder...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/cadillac_01-11.html

snip>>>

"...GWEN IFILL: House leaders support a plan to raise taxes on families earning a million dollars or more and individuals who earn $500,000 or more.

For more on the pros and the cons of the so-called Cadillac tax, we turn to Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- he is also a paid consultant to the Obama administration -- and Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that receives some money from labor groups.

Welcome to you both.

Jonathan Gruber, why is this a good idea?

JONATHAN GRUBER: Well, thanks for having me on, Gwen.

I think it's a good idea because we need to look at what happens currently when people make the decision between getting paid in wages or health insurance. If MIT offers to give me a $1,000 raise, I'm only going to take home about $600, because I will get taxed at 40 percent on that raise. If MIT says, here's $1,000 extra fringe benefit in your health insurance, I get to keep the whole $1,000, because I'm not taxed on that.

That tax subsidy, employer-sponsored insurance, as it's called, costs our nation about $250 billion a year and leads, by many economists in the Congressional Budget Office's estimates, to excessive health insurance coverage and rising health care costs.

What this bill would do is slightly scale back that existing tax bias by taxing the most expensive plans on the amount they spend above a certain threshold, and basically scaling back the giveaway we now have to the most expensive health insurance plans.

JONATHAN GRUBER: ... scale-back.

GWEN IFILL: Let me just get -- get -- let Josh Bivens in here now, because he says it's a giveaway to the existing health insurance plans. What do you say?

JOSH BIVENS, Economic Policy Institute: I don't know if I would call it a giveaway. I do think it's not a great idea.

I mean, I think one problem is, it's often talked -- it's called a Cadillac tax. And the idea is that we're taxing somehow lavish plans that provide generous coverage. It's not very well targeted at all. I would be in favor of some sort of well-targeted way to do this, but this is a very poorly targeted policy proposal.

GWEN IFILL: You're saying the people who benefit from it are people who are just middle-class folks?

JOSH BIVENS: Well, actually, I would say there are reasons why health insurance plans are expensive, and generosity is not necessarily one of them. We have a very dysfunctional health insurance market, and high-cost plans do not equal high-value plans.

In fact, research says that, of the entire spread of health insurance premiums, their cost, only about 4 percent can -- of that can be accounted for by generosity of plan. You're likely to have an expensive plan if you work for a small firm, if you work for a firm with an aging work force. It really is not about Cadillac plans or lavish benefits. It's just people who happen to work for -- in those kinds of workplaces.

So, I think it's very poorly targeted in that regard..."

[ProfessorPlum]

6. Wait - so Gruber says the consequences of the tax on good

health insurance plans is that fewer companies will give their employees these nice plans . . . and then wages will go up? Huh? How does that follow? If anything, this will be an excuse to race to the bottom with health insurance - and then the revenues from the "cadillac" tax will dry up, and we'll still have the same old god damned mess we have now. WTF>?

[slipslidingaway]

8. Well I agree with your assesment and doubt that wages will rise ...

in proportion to the lower cost plans. I also agree with Bivens that costs will be shifted to the individuals, although Gruber argues that we should not see a drop off in HC use. So we are shifting money around to pay for this bill and by asking people to pay more out of pocket, hopefully they will not overuse the HC system and lower HC costs across the board.

:shrug:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/cadillac_01-11.html

GWEN IFILL: There's a big difference, Jonathan Gruber, right now, in your -- the way you add this up, exactly how the money would be saved, how that cost curve would be benefit, and how the money would be saved. You're saying that, by increasing this tax, you're basically, in the end, going to increase wages and save money. He's saying he's not so sure that will happen.

Am I interpreting that correctly?

JONATHAN GRUBER: That's exactly right, Gwen.

Basically, when -- we agree that one way -- the main way employers will react to this tax is by scaling back the generosity of their plans. I would argue that there's no evidence that that scale-back is actually going to reduce health.

We're talking about the plans -- even at firms with older workers, the plans that exceed this threshold are very, very generous. They will be moved to merely very generous plans. And the result will be higher wages for workers. And those higher wages, 90 percent of those higher wages will go to workers below $200,000 a year in income.

So, it's basically going to be trading off excessively generous benefits for higher wages for their workers."


-----And I love the way he says this is not a new tax, instead we are scaling back on a tax break - nice framing.

"JONATHAN GRUBER: I think you are, Gwen. And I think Josh's points are right, because I think you need to remember that we're not talking about a new tax on these people.

We're talking about saying they currently get an enormous tax break. And we're going to slightly scale that back and use the money to cover uninsured people...

...GWEN IFILL: Is a tradeoff? Are we talking about it -- let's get the terminology right first, Josh Bivens. Are we talking about a new tax or are we talking about letting off -- relieving someone from a tax break they always were getting?

JOSH BIVENS: Yes, I think that's a distinction mostly without a difference.

GWEN IFILL: Yes.

JOSH BIVENS: I mean, one way or the other, we're going to have to finance health care reform with higher taxes on some people relative to what they're paying today.

GWEN IFILL: But you're just question -- you're questioning who those people should be?

JOSH BIVENS: And I'm also questioning whether or not this is the best way to do it. I mean, we have a competing proposal in the House reform bill that is a much more progressive tax. It only hits about the top 0.3 percent of income-earners..."

[BEZERKO]

7. The term "cadilac" plans pisses me off.

I'm not sure what this refers to, but I'm pretty sure I fall into that category. We can not afford much more cost when it comes to health care. Even with my employer based plan, the costs for our family run anywhere from a thousand a year to two thousand plus and it just keeps going up. A trip to the emergency room at midnight because our three year old had a temperature over 103, 150 dollars before we get in the door. A bill comes a month later for another 150, a bill from the doctor for 150 for three minutes of his time, a bill from the lab etc. etc. we can't afford much more

[slipslidingaway]

9. Those numbers sound low, but there are some guidelines in the transcript

link...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/cadillac_01-11.html

GWEN IFILL: That follows our debate over taxing high-cost insurance plans.

Senate and House Democrats who are hashing out the differences between their health care reform bills behind closed doors have a major disagreement on their hands: how to pay for it. Should high-value insurance plans be taxed, or should high-income households pay the price?

The Senate proposal, which President Obama supports, would raise about $150 billion over six years. The money would come from imposing an excise tax of 40 percent on the portion of any policy that costs more than $8,500 for individuals or $23,000 for families. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that would affect one in five workers by 2016. The White House and some economists argue this approach would rein in health care spending by discouraging excessive insurance coverage..."

[BEZERKO]

14. I don't think so.

I don't know how much my health care plan costs my employer, but I'm pretty sure it's on up there. I have three members in my family, Me, my better half, and our son. Health care plans are very expensive, try and go to Aetna or Blue Cross or Cigna and buy one for your family, it's way expensive. These plans that they are calling "cadilac" are more like Yugo health care plans. And your costs are still expensive. Our costs for our son's visit to the emergency room were over six hundred. We don't go to the doctor but maybe three times a year and forget about the dental care we need! There's no way we can afford it! Our costs may be low, but we can't afford them! Two to three thousand for a good year is blood money.

[slipslidingaway]

15. Maybe I did not understand your post, but I agree that any extra amount

is just not possible for some people.

:hi:

[slipslidingaway]

13. kick - this was a good discussion n/t