In its new health reform policy, replacing Health Access America, the American Medical Association writes: “We also believe that individuals with high incomes have a responsibility to obtain coverage for themselves and their families.”
Persons with an income greater than 500% of federal poverty ($49,000 for an individual, $100,000 for a family of four) would face tax penalties for not obtaining acceptable coverage. This “responsibility” is distinguished from a mandate in that there would be no criminal penalties, notes the AMA Health Policy Group.
High-income persons, however, should not get an “unfair and inefficient” tax break. Instead of simply eliminating the tax exclusion or providing the same benefit for all, including those who individually own their policies, the AMA proposal would make health insurance purchase a form of progressive taxation, through refundable, advanceable, income-based tax credits.
“The AMA proposal would expand insurance coverage by redirecting the current health insurance subsidy from higher to lower income groups.”
For example, considering a family with income $50,000 and one with income $150,000, the “effective premium” for a $10,000 policy would go from $8,875 now to $4,000 for the first family, and from $7,900 to $10,000 for the second.
This means that if a family earns three times as much, it would have to pay 250% more for insurance.
Apparently, the AMA believes that everyone except the poor should have to spend an approximately equal proportion of income on health insurance. The coverage for the second family is “still a lower proportion of income” than spent by the first (6% vs. 7%).
The Health Policy Group does not comment on the fact that more than 15% of U.S. GDP is spent on medical care—or for the “responsibility,” enforced by criminal penalties, that high earners have for paying taxes to support public programs.
Other features of the AMA proposal: it “allows for the continuation of employment-based insurance in the private sector”; it does not allow the use of tax credits for out-of-pocket expenses, as this could reduce incentives to purchase insurance and encourage “excess” use of health services [emphasis added]. The latter would also help defeat rationing efforts by third parties.
The AMA states that it does favor encouraging individually owned insurance and a reduction in benefit mandates.
According to an Arizona Medical Association delegate, AMA officials are engaged in high-level meetings with Obama, Baucus, Daschle, and Kennedy.
Additional information:
The mandatory insurance favored by the AMA is a gross violation of individual rights. Plus it has already been attempted (and failed) in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts plan has only resulted in skyrocketing costs and long waits for care – just like under any other system of socialized medicine.
For more information about the problems with mandatory insurance, see the following article from the Fall 2008 issue of The Objective Standard:
“Mandatory Insurance: Wrong For Massachusetts, Wrong For America”
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-fall/mandatory-health-insurance.asp
or http://tinyurl.com/6zkcap
Paul Hsieh, MD
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
http://www.WeStandFIRM.org
For the financially flawed, such as myself, could you give some examples of annual costs of insurance for people making $50,000/year? How much of said person’s medical care would be covered by such insurance?
What do you estimate the administrative cost of such insurance to be compared to the premium? If someone paid $4,000 as premium, how much would be spent to administer the policy?
What are the corresponding numbers for a mandatory federal program? State program? Perhaps all 3 forms of insurance could compete for patients.
This was tried, and is FAILING, in Massachusetts.
Whose best interest does the AMA have at heart?
Do we have a law yet preventing officers of the AMA from taking jobs as lobbyists after they sell our health care system down the river?
Dr. Butler,
I don’t want to sound alarmist; but I am concerned.
“…..What do you estimate the administrative cost of such insurance to be compared to the premium?… ”
Please read this report from the Heritage Foundation:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/bg2224.cfm
(You will have to “cut and paste” AAPS doesn’t supply hot links.)
This dire situation is immanent. You are about to become a government employee. And not someone well regarded, for all your sacrifice.
Worrying about “administrative cost” is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
EVERY PHYSICIAN SHOULD READ THIS CITATION-
IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE ISSUES, YOU CAN’T DEFEND YOURSELF.
AND YOU WON’T KNOW WHAT HIT YOU…
Gentlemen:
I can take it down a notch further, I suppose…
Please let the medical world know what is happening.
We are all too busy taking care of our patients to have the long view and recognize what is happening to health care in America.
This matters…
(((thanks)))
AMA joins the new movement: P4P—Punishment for Productivity. It ain’t right. Also it doesn’t work.
The AMA clearly needs an ENEMA!! At the very least we ALL NEED TO CONTACT OUR COUNTY AND STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY/LOBBYISTS AND VOICE OUR DISPLEASURE. The AMA has become a Good Old Boy Network and is no longer representing the best interests of Medicine, or really productive America. AAPS NEEDS TO GET THE WORD OUT-IT IS THE TRUE VOICE OF MEDICINE. The AMA is selling out it’s members-this is rob Peter to pay Paul. I am Stunned!
One more reason (as if we needed any more) to cross the AMA off the list as the voice of liberty for docs. They have completely sold out to corporate, pharma and insurance interests. Their policy of “appeasement” which they have carried out for years, has helped these powers completely destroy healthcare in America.
“…Other features of the AMA proposal: it “allows for the continuation of employment-based insurance in the private sector”; it does not allow the use of tax credits for out-of-pocket expenses, as this could reduce incentives to purchase insurance and encourage “excess” use of health services [emphasis added]. The latter would also help defeat rationing efforts by third parties.”
The AMA has this exactly backwards.
It is the preferential tax treatment employment-based insurance that has broken our health care system.
It traps employees in jobs they don’t enjoy. Talk about “health care portability” …
It also puts health care on the corporate spread sheet, which has become a huge liability, and puts us in the “cross hairs” of the ruthless greed of big business.
We need greater tax incentives for out of pocket expenses, to make heath care competitive again, and bring us back to a free market.
Who is the mouth piece for the AMA? Who is paying this person’s salary? Sounds like this person is dating a lobbyist for big insurance.
I joined the AMA for two years when I started my practice. I’m now retired.
When I quit my membership, they were left wing then. Their plan with fit in perfectly with the socialist agenda of Obama. This will endear the AMA to the left. Anything they propose should be dealt with in a contrarian direction for the benefit of patients and physicians.
If a doctor believes that the moral life is the life lived for others he has no moral defense to the demands that he give up all his values in service to the needy. The morality of altruism is killing the medical profession and the greatest country in the history of the world. It is time to learn that their is an alternative, the morality of rational self interest, that enables men to live in harmony with other human beings on earth and enjoy the enormous benefits of production and trade of free men in a free country. Read Ayn Rand!
excuse the typo. It should be there not their.
PLEASE !! get this information to all AMA members. So far ‘we’ are still living in a democracy. The “vote” of people leaving the AMA when they realize the position of the AMA compared to the AAPS should speak loudly to the public and public officials listening to these idiots. The AMA does not speak for the majority of physicians.
Employer based health insurance is unfair as those policy holders are not paying for their health insurance but getting it with before tax dollars. To level the field let everyone purchase insurance and allow the premium to be tax deductible. No more employer subsidized insurance.