Do proposals to pay for excessive health care costs through "tax credits" have "timing issues"?

[cascadiance]

I haven't had a chance to study things closely, but I'm hearing about some of the cost controls for individuals to cap what they are responsible for in health care costs by having the government offer a tax credit for the difference, which sounds nice like it makes it so noone will ever have to pay more than x percentage of their income in health care costs and that the government in those cases will "cover" that excess through tax credits.

But if we use tax credits to pay for this difference, aren't we setting up the same sort of timing problem that taxpayers have felt with AMT liabilities? That one needs to come up with money before the government SUBSEQUENTLY the following year "corrects things" when you file your taxes to make up the difference?

If your faced with 100's of thousands of dollars of medical bills RIGHT NOW to get something critical done RIGHT NOW, most people won't be able to pay that bill unless they can find credit for that amount until the government pays them back that tax credit later.

Now this stinks like a potential favor to banksters, who already take advantage of the poor with payday loans with interest rates of well over 100% for those needing money right away. Are we going to see more opportunism with loans with HUGE interest rates to pay for these kind of medical costs, which they know they'll profiteer heavily between the time the person is forced to by the hospital to pay such a bill and the time the person gets their tax refund the following year?

Not sure if this is being looked at, but unless the payments for such services are IMMEDIATE by the government, we're potentially setting up more opportunities for loan shark hucksterism as a side effect here that still might have people die if they can't get this sort of credit to pay for their procedures. Or if they do, then the government and individuals again have to subsidize bankster loan sharks as well as the insurance companies.

Someone else want to clarify if the bills will take care of this sort of thing not happening? I'd study it to find out about it more, but I have a lot of other pressing issues at the moment that need attention.

[subterranean]

1. No one will have that much in medical bills (unless they're uninsured).

Plans in the exchange would cap out-of-pocket costs at (I think) $11,800 for families and $5000 for individuals. Once you hit those levels, insurance will cover 100%. I can see how a lot of families might have trouble coming up with $11,000, and that's going be a problem. Still, it's better than having to pay $100,000.

Also, unless I'm mistaken, the tax credits are to help pay the insurance premiums, not out-of-pocket medical costs.

[cascadiance]

2. Cool, just want to make sure there aren't "holes" like that that people aren't anticipating.

Even $5k or $11.8k can hurt some people a lot, but one can still probably get a loan for that if needed, though for some that might also be a payday loan as well. But then again hopefully that cap applies to all citizens and not just a certain income level too. It's all of those little "nooks" and "crannies" that drive me nuts and I really haven't had time to look into, but those kind of areas is what I'm sure that insurance company lobbyists are paid to spend days on to find where they can exploit money or perhaps bankster lobbyists as well do the same thing. The devil is usually in the details on these kinds of bills.