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Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!
Vox, again, with a solid piece on UHC.

Guestcolumnist'd by Ron Pollack. I'm not fully on board with it (VT conversation would have been better served with more details and nuance, benefits of SP are insufficiently explored), but the intro hits my personal hobbyhorses quite well:

quote:

The overriding goal among progressives is to ensure that health care becomes a basic human right — truly and affordably available for all, irrespective of income, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, and geography.
[...]
Too many progressives and others fail to distinguish between “universal coverage” and “single-payer.” The terms are used interchangeably in private conversations and in the national arena.

As we consider the most effective strategy for achieving universal coverage, progressives should keep two admonitions in mind. First, we must not conflate our foremost health care goal (universal coverage) with competing pathways toward achieving that goal. Second, recognizing that our differences are about strategy and not final goals, the dialogue should be undertaken with mutual respect.

e: wonkdog tax

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evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

https://twitter.com/desiderioDC/status/907348519589236739

because

https://twitter.com/PeterSullivan4/status/907350325530636293

(paul/collins/murkowski means it's dead)

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever
The sad part is that Randroid Paul only opposes it because it doesn't utterly repeal any and all government intervention in health care, including the ACA, Medicare and Medicaid. He would like to have a few dozen very ill people form a queue outside of his office so that he can kick them to the ground and then scream at them to bootstrap themselves vertical again.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

JustJeff88 posted:

The sad part is that Randroid Paul only opposes it because it doesn't utterly repeal any and all government intervention in health care, including the ACA, Medicare and Medicaid. He would like to have a few dozen very ill people form a queue outside of his office so that he can kick them to the ground and then scream at them to bootstrap themselves vertical again.

Actually it's strongly suspected that Paul opposes it because he doesn't want obamacare repealed because it works very well in Kentucky and repeal would be a political disaster for him, but he absolutely can't admit it. No matter what the proposal is Paul has found a way to oppose it unless it's clear it can't pass.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

evilweasel posted:

Actually it's strongly suspected that Paul opposes it because he doesn't want obamacare repealed because it works very well in Kentucky and repeal would be a political disaster for him, but he absolutely can't admit it. No matter what the proposal is Paul has found a way to oppose it unless it's clear it can't pass.

This is probably true, and it's very annoying that this works so very very well.

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever

VitalSigns posted:

This is probably true, and it's very annoying that this works so very very well.

It's a simultaneously heart-warming and spine-chilling example of unquenchable thirst for power blunting pure evil.

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!

JustJeff88 posted:

It's a simultaneously heart-warming and spine-chilling example of unquenchable thirst for power blunting pure evil.

He has learned remarkably well from his father (who never voted for pork, but inserted it into every must-pass bill he could). There's also a solid chance that his bullshit helped delay this process enough to kill Repeal & Replace and protect his constituents.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Of course, decades of cynical liars like the Pauls peddling bullshit to rubes in order to get elected, then counting on more serious Republicans to save them from the consequences of their ideas becoming law, all the while trashing them as traitorous liberal RINOs every time they fall on their swords saving the country and the Pauls from their own campaign rhetoric, then doubling down on their promises of how great it would be if only we could get rid of the RINOs and pass all their cockamamie lolbertarian schemes...has resulted in enough true believers getting elected that they came one vote short of destroying the individual health insurance market for literally no reason with no benefit to anyone, and there's a constant threat that the US will just default on its bonds and destroy the world economy again for no reason.

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Sep 12, 2017

mila kunis
Jun 10, 2011

Paracaidas posted:

The evil house in CA killed the senate UHC bill*. Bastards.

*Bill didn't include funding mechanism, plan to comply with CA constitution, and was functionally identical to writing "single payer now!" on a napkin.

The Democrats have a supermajority in Califoria, a state that has the sixth largest economy in the world. Given these conditions, why have they not been able to table and pass a better bill?

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

tekz posted:

The Democrats have a supermajority in Califoria, a state that has the sixth largest economy in the world. Given these conditions, why have they not been able to table and pass a better bill?

Single-Payer at the state-level in California requires a constitutional amendment because of Article 9.

Half of all raised taxes for the general fund have to go to education, so any single-payer proposal has to either come after a constitutional amendment or has to raise taxes roughly 2x higher than needed to comply with Article 9.

Shimrra Jamaane
Aug 10, 2007

Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

tekz posted:

The Democrats have a supermajority in Califoria, a state that has the sixth largest economy in the world. Given these conditions, why have they not been able to table and pass a better bill?

It's always disingenuous when people talk about California being the 6th largest economy in the world. Yes that's technically true but it's not like it's all theirs to keep and spend.

Aeka 2.0
Nov 16, 2000

:ohdear: Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.




Dinosaur Gum

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

It's always disingenuous when people talk about California being the 6th largest economy in the world. Yes that's technically true but it's not like it's all theirs to keep and spend.

drat welfare queen red states.

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!

tekz posted:

The Democrats have a supermajority in Califoria, a state that has the sixth largest economy in the world. Given these conditions, why have they not been able to table and pass a better bill?

What the house tabled (before evidently changing its mind) was essentially a napkin with "single payer now" scrawled on it that passed the senate with a simple majority.

The bill was able to pass the senate in this manner because it didn't technically do... anything.

Lara and Atkins claimed victory in passing their "bill" and then laid blame on Rendon for stalling it in the house. My objection, as it has been the whole time, is that progressive angst is misplaced. That CA Dems have been avoiding a push for the SP they ran on providing is shameful.

You could blame Rendon, who accurately assessed that Lara and Atkins sought to force all risk, effort, and blame onto his caucus by passing an empty and nonbinding bill that passed under lighter standards than the final bill will require, needing only a simple majority on account of, again, not loving doing anything .

Or, you could blame Atkins and Lara who sought to harness the momentum of grassroots progressives and unions in order to raise their profiles and insulate themselves from risk while providing zero actual value.

CA Dems need to push forward on UHC and make an honest effort at Single Payer. That Rendon, rather than Atkins and Lara, is facing recall threats is a troubling sign for the movement going forward.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!
May 31, 2006
remember a few pages back, when UHC was something the democratic party was nobly willing to make happen, regardless of the political cost they would pay for doing so

good times

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!

Ze Pollack posted:

remember a few pages back, when UHC was something the democratic party was nobly willing to make happen, regardless of the political cost they would pay for doing so

good times

Would you care to clarify what you're referring to? I mean, this looks like a threadshitting nonsequitur in one of the few decent D&D/AmPol threads...but surely it must be something else.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!
May 31, 2006

Paracaidas posted:

Would you care to clarify what you're referring to? I mean, this looks like a threadshitting nonsequitur in one of the few decent D&D/AmPol threads...but surely it must be something else.

evilweasel posted:

the democrats passed obamacare knowing it was going to cost them elections (though it cost them a lot more than they expected)

democrats believe very strongly in uhc, they may vehemently disagree on what can be done or what the best form of uhc is but they believe in uhc. that got obamacare across the finish line when it became clear it was the best that could be done, because democrats really, really believed in it.

once upon a time, when it was convenient for some people to claim to believe it, Democrats were noble crusaders for UHC, willing to pay whatever political price was necessary to make it happen

now, confronted with an opportunity to make it happen, these same noble democrats are whining about how dare someone else not do more of the work for them to make this thing they Definitely Believe In come to pass, and their supporters are whining how terrible a sign it is that the person who said "gently caress off with this single payer bullshit" has made people angry by doing so.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

ze pollack's posting makes a lot more sense now that i realize he doesn't even realize obamacare exists

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Paracaidas posted:

CA Dems need to push forward on UHC and make an honest effort at Single Payer. That Rendon, rather than Atkins and Lara, is facing recall threats is a troubling sign for the movement going forward.

But the recall threat worked, Rendon reversed himself and announced a select committee to hold hearings on healthcare, rather than killing it with a "gee someone else should legislate on health care not us the legislature, maybe next year *wink*"

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Also "the bill sucks so we can't fix healthcare sorry" is a horseshit excuse coming from the legislature whose job it is to write bills that don't suck.

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!
Simple question: If Rendon marshaled his caucus to pass the Senate's bill word for word, would California be any closer to Single Payer legislation?

VitalSigns posted:

Also "the bill sucks so we can't fix healthcare sorry" is a horseshit excuse coming from the legislature whose job it is to write bills that don't suck.
:ssh:it's also the Senate's job to write bills that don't suck, and actually do things:ssh:
Shame on the SEIU, for not understanding how legislation works!

Laphonza Butler, president of the statewide council of the Service Employees International Union posted:

“We expected the Senate would take amendments, have thoughts about the financing and the structure,” said Butler, who released a statement Friday afternoon backing Rendon’s decision to hold the bill.
Shame on the UFCW, for being so ignorant about the legislative process.

UFCW posted:

SB 562 failed not because of Speaker Rendon, but because the proponents tried to exploit a Trump narrative and make threats to pass an incomplete policy without doing the tough work to build a truly broad-based progressive coalition. [...] The only way this is going to happen without falling into the factionalism that has destroyed the rest of the country’s politics is to build the biggest and strongest coalition to drive a comprehensive agenda and make sound policy arguments for the issues we are pushing. The campaign for SB 562 lacked most of this and that is the true reason why it failed
Shame on the SBCTC, single payer advocates who backed Rendon's move. Shame on Planned Parenthood. We all know how friendly PP and organized labor are with the corporate donors who you've repeatedly suggested were Rendon's true reason for shelving SB 562.

I'm thrilled (as I've said upthread! In posts you've quoted!) that California is getting to work on UHC in whatever form it may take. There are state-specific hurdles that make a plan like SB 562 markedly more complicated in California than elsewhere, which is why I'm also glad that he's essentially starting from scratch and exploring a variety of methods that may be more likely to succeed (and wouldn't necessitate block granting). The research, hearings, and eventual legislation will be a helpful resource for other states and for the federal government.

VitalSigns posted:

But the recall threat worked, Rendon reversed himself and announced a select committee to hold hearings on healthcare, rather than killing it with a "gee someone else should legislate on health care not us the legislature, maybe next year *wink*"
Did Rendon deserve a recall campaign and death threats before June 23rd?

Atkins and Lara also decided that "someone else should legislate on health care not us the legislature", and yet have emerged unscathed. Rendon accurately described the unprecedented vacuousness of SB 562 (which, again, was literally only able to pass by not being a real bill), and received immense backlash. Atkins and Lara (who has received more $$ from health/pharma companies than Rendon) are using the episode to boost their profiles as they seek higher office. SB 562 as passed by the Senate literally could never become law, yet work by the Senate stopped immediately. As such, Atkins, Lara, and Rendon all deserve scorn for wasting the first 6(8) months of the session and yet for some reason, the former are being fêted by the movement while the later has become a target of national scorn.

That's got distressing implications for UHC moving forward, especially given what we've witnessed from Congress on healthcare this year. A mission statement is not a bill. Grandstanding is neither leadership nor bravery. Passing the buck is not progress.

EugeneJ
Feb 5, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Bernie's new bill doesn't include long-term care coverage like his campaign plan did

Is that the only difference?

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011


Lmao the activists that you spent two months shaming and deriding managed to get health care reform resurrected and into committee and now you're crying about it because they didn't listen to you and spend the time complacently bitching online about the ungrateful voters who expect legislators to do the job they were elected to do.

It would behoove you to learn something from this about strategy but you won't.

Paracaidas posted:

Atkins and Lara also decided that "someone else should legislate on health care not us the legislature", and yet have emerged unscathed. Rendon accurately described the unprecedented vacuousness of SB 562 (which, again, was literally only able to pass by not being a real bill), and received immense backlash.

Who gives a poo poo. No one cares that Rendon is right that incomplete bills suck. His job is to write bills, not sit and complain that the bill fairy didn't drop one in his lap.

Yeah the Senate should have written a complete bill, but the Assembly should too. People like you were content to sit back and let a few Dems in the Senate go Lieberman on the thing and use their ability to block the supermajority from passing a supermajority-required funding mechanism while the Assembly says "oh well no one wrote a bill ohhhh well." Well voters won't stand for that poo poo nor should they. If the Senate couldn't get a workable bill done then it's the Assembly's job to make a good faith effort to enact the will of the voters by holding hearings and writing legislation themselves, not sabotage democracy by refusing to hold any hearings and go "well golly gosh gee somehow nothing got done I guess it's impossible!"

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Sep 13, 2017

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!

EugeneJ posted:

Bernie's new bill doesn't include long-term care coverage like his campaign plan did

Is that the only difference?

Thus far I'm not seeing anything more than his interview with Weigel, which is obviously light on specifics. I believe the text drops tomorrow, so most analysis will start showing up end of the week/start of next week. Based on the WaPo story, my quick thoughts:
That he's got economists looking into it is encouraging (though I hope he stays far away from Amherst given how that went during the campaign), especially given "The size of the tax increase, he said, would be determined in a separate bill." Tactically, it makes sense to avoid tying an explicit tax increase to a stillborn bill but the Repeal & Replace saga shows that advocates have 40 months to determine and settle on the actual specifics. Activists and donors will both push in their own ways during that time period, and it'll be fascinating to see the shape of the debate come 2021.

The makeup of the GOP will play an interesting role as well. If it's strongly Establishment, it's plausible that the medicaid expansion and even the public option would be the mainstream conservative position as donors try to peel off enough Dems for a bipartisan solution that mostly maintains the status quo. They've memoryholed deeper held beliefs and (assuming Dems control both chambers and the white house) will have just suffered consecutive wave defeats.

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!
tl;dr: Single Payer, Legislative Process, and Advocacy in California. #CorrectTheRecord while desperately hoping we can drown this out CAchat with the thread's typical intelligent reaction to and decent sources about Bernie's bill. Perhaps you'd like me more if I were on your ignore list?

VitalSigns posted:

People like you were content to sit back and let a few Dems in the Senate go Lieberman on the thing and use their ability to block the supermajority from passing a supermajority-required funding mechanism while the Assembly says "oh well no one wrote a bill ohhhh well." Well voters won't stand for that poo poo nor should they. If the Senate couldn't get a workable bill done then it's the Assembly's job to make a good faith effort to enact the will of the voters by holding hearings and writing legislation themselves, not sabotage democracy by refusing to hold any hearings and go "well golly gosh gee somehow nothing got done I guess it's impossible!"
Let's skip your strawmen of my beliefs and pivot towards #content. I sense there's some unfamiliarity with California's legislative process (which makes sense, it's nuts), as well as the bill's history.

Background:
Dems hold 27 seats of the Senate's 40.
Dems hold 54 seats of the Assembly's 80
Prop 26 requires a 2/3 majority (27 or 53 votes) for essentially anything revenue related
Proposition 98 mandates ~40-50% of spending be on education.
The last day a bill can be introduced is 2/17/2017
The last day a bill can pass its originating house is 6/2/2017
Ballot Initiatives are on the November ballot in General Election (even) years

Now there are some gory details: Prop 98 can be suspended for a year with a 2/3 supermajority, but the state is responsible for paying back the difference resulting from the suspension over 5 years. As a result, there's no practical way of achieving Single Payer in California without repealing or otherwise amending Prop 98. Despite the NNU's fervent insistence otherwise, Lara&Atkins recognize this.

Lara&Atkins introduce the bill on 2/17/2017, and it is sparse. Surely some of us have turned in similar rough drafts on the due dates. The final version is introduced on 5/26/2017 before being voted on the following Friday. This bill, which was passed to the Assembly on 6/2/2017, did not contain a funding mechanism. Or many details about how to implement the broader reforms it calls for. Far from being Liebermanesque cowardice by centrist Senate Dems, reports from the time indicate that it took substantial pressure to scrape the 23 votes with which the bill passed:

The LA Times posted:

Just hours before the Senate approved the bill in early June, it was unclear whether the measure would come up for a vote at all. Several Senate Democrats, who asked to remain anonymous to speak about internal caucus discussions with The Times, said legislators balked at being asked to take up a bill with uncertain financing.

After passing an unfinanced bill to the Assembly, the sponsors went silent before turning their focus on Rendon as he shelved the bill. Sponsors claim that they intended to finish the legislative process in the Assembly with amendments. 3+ months later, I'm not aware of any text surfacing (Rendon cannot control the public release or discussion of amendments). Just under a month after receiving the bill, Rendon newsdumped late on a Friday afternoon that he was pocketing SB 562 and that no action would be taken on it by the Assembly for the remainder of the year. It is now more than 4 months past the deadline for Assembly to introduce its own bill rather than modify SB 562.

At this stage, Rendon has stalled the Senate's bill and ruined the efforts of the Senate to pass a bill that can be implemented in 2017. That is why they rushed an unfinished and unfinanced bill through the Senate at the deadline, right? WRONG. Linked above is the rule that Ballot Initatives can only occur in even years (2018), which is necessary to generate the spending authority for the bill. The bill contains text nullifying itself it funding/spending authority isn't available. Lara, Atkins, and the NNU pushed through an empty bill that, even if made entirely function by the Assembly, could not be implemented in any way for 18 months.

Onto my interpretation:
Why do this? Given the 18 month gap, there's no reason the bill had to pass out of the Senate and into the Assembly. Lara & Atkins literally gave up on legislating.
My most charitable explanation is that the sponsors wanted to flex their muscles by proving they could pass something through the Senate (hoping nobody looked too closely) and force the Assembly to take a stand early to ease negotiations next September. If true, this makes the NNU's rhetoric even more remarkably disingenuous.

Callifornia Nurse's Association Deborah Burger posted:

“The people of California are counting on the Legislature to protect them now, not sometime next year, and as polls have shown Californians support this proposal by a wide majority. A solution to this healthcare emergency could be at hand; Speaker Rendon is standing in opposition.”
The people of California, of course, are waiting until January of 2019 regardless of what Rendon does. This detail is absent from NNU's advocacy.

The less charitable version is that Atkins and Lara have broader political ambitions and wanted credit and glory for passing Single Payer, counting on Rendon to either don the black hat and protect his caucus or for the Assembly to have to do the actual work of legislating.

If you actually read my (admittedly tedious) posts, you'll note that I've never mocked, shamed, or derided the activists. Forcing the hand of the Speaker (even halfway) and providing enough pressure that a bill tripling the state budget is a remarkable feat, and it shows the sort of work that will be necessary to overcome the corporate bombardment we'll see if Prop 98 turns into a proxy referendum on Single Payer. Atkins, Lara, and the NNU, by contrast, are truly loathsome pieces of poo poo for lying to the movement they're leading and benefiting themselves off of it. Compared to that, Rendon (and Planned Parenthood, the SEIU, and the other unions I listed upthread) seems pretty benign.

Peachfart
Jan 21, 2017

VitalSigns isn't going to read that, he will just call you a centrist and move on. Great post though.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

I like how having to do work to write bills is apparently some kind of evil trick being pulled on the Assembly.

We were just supposed to sit back and collect corporate donations and say "oh gosh who has the time" whenever anyone asked what we were doing about healthcare, working wasn't part of the deal!

E:
Here's the thing: I don't care whether 562's sponsors are the evil mustache-twisting villains passing Single Payer to smear Rendon's good name that you think they are. It doesn't loving matter because writing legislation in the public's interest is the job of the Assembly, "oh we're waiting for the Senate to do something" is no excuse for sitting on their hands, and the Assembly should have been holding these hearings of its own accord anyway without being backed into a corner by some big PR stunt. The Senate should also write good bills and not pass poo poo, but if they don't that's no excuse for the Assembly to do nothing. No one gives a poo poo that a dirty trick forced the Assembly to do its job because they should have been doing their job in the first place. The fact that you're angrier that the Assembly's stonewalling was defeated by a breach of :sparkles:decorum:sparkles: than you are about the stonewalling itself (which imo is a bigger breach of decorum because it's a subversion of our entire representative democracy) is quite frankly baffling.

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Sep 13, 2017

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

I know all about Prop 98's asinine funding requirements.

So here's a question for you: given that ballot initiatives can only be scheduled in even years, and that the last day to introduce a bill is in February-something of that year, what do you think the odds are that the Assembly would have a bill ready to be introduced by February 2018 if they didn't start working on it now and instead waited until "sometime next year" to begin? Pretty much zero, right?

And if it's not ready by then, then the window for scheduling a ballot initiative would be closed until 2020, right?

So the recall threat that finally got the Speaker to appoint a committee was essential to being able to craft a bill with any hope of taking effect in 2019, right?

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Sep 13, 2017

EugeneJ
Feb 5, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
The Contents Of The New Medicare-For-All Bill

quote:

Senator Sanders released his updated Medicare-for-all bill yesterday. Below is a simple summary of the general contents of the proposal.

Coverage Areas

The bill requires coverage of hospital services, ambulatory patient services, primary and preventive services, prescription drugs, medical devices, mental health services, substance abuse services, laboratory and diagnostic services, reproductive care, maternity care, newborn care, pediatrics, dental, vision, and short term rehabilitative services. Notably, the bill does not include long-term care, but Sanders has reportedly said long-term care would be handled in a separate bill.

This is a generous coverage universe, but it is not unheard of. Critics tend to roll their eyes at the inclusion of vision, dental, and prescription drugs. But Denmark’s public system covers all of those areas with some cost-sharing.

Cost-Sharing

The bill forbids cost-sharing for anything but prescription drugs. This means that there would be no deductibles, no coinsurance, no copayments, or other kinds of out-of-pocket expenses. The details of the prescription drug cost-sharing are mostly left to the regulators to work out, but there is a requirement that no individual be subjected to more than $250 of cost-sharing in a given year.

Transition

Those under the age of 19 would be enrolled immediately into the Medicare system. These individuals would be allowed to maintain their private health insurance in addition to their Medicare coverage during the four-year transition period. After that transition is over, there is a provision forbidding private insurance from duplicating the coverage provided by Medicare, which would effectively kill off any private insurance maintained by children up to that point.

For those over the age of 18, eligibility to enroll will be phased-in over four years. After year one, those 55 and over will be eligible. After year two, those 45 and over will be eligible. After year three, those 35 and over will be eligible. And after year four, everyone will be eligible. During that four-year period, adults will also have the ability to buy in to Medicare on the exchanges or if their employer chooses to offer it as an option.

Funding

The bill would bring in existing federal expenditures on healthcare made for Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal Employee Health Benefits program, TRICARE, and other smaller programs.

In addition to the bill, Sanders released a paper with tax proposals that are intended to provide the remainder of the funding. The proposals are:

1. A 7.5 percent employer-side payroll tax. This tax is intended to impound the money employers currently pump into the healthcare sector through private insurance premiums.

2. A 4 percent income tax surcharge. This tax is intended to impound the money individuals currently pump into the healthcare sector through private insurance premiums. Because the tax is being collected through the federal income tax code, the standard deduction can be applied towards it, meaning that families making less than $29,000 would pay nothing, and families making $50,000 would pay just $844 per year, far less than they currently pay in private insurance premiums.

3. Higher income taxes on the very rich. The plan calls for creating more tax brackets for higher earners with marginal tax rates spanning from 40 percent for income made between $250,000 and $500,000 to 52 percent for income made over $10 million.

4. Elimination of capital gains preference. Currently capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. This reform would tax capital gains as ordinary income.

5. Capping deductions for the very rich. For households with incomes over $250,000, the value of particular itemized deductions would be capped at 28 percent. Currently the value of an itemized deduction is based on your highest marginal tax rate. So, someone whose highest marginal tax rate is 39.6 percent would receive 39.6 cents of value for every 1 dollar of tax deduction they claim. Under this reform, high-income families would only be able to receive at most 28 cents of value for every 1 dollar of tax deduction.

6. Increase the estate tax. Under this proposal, the current 40 percent estate tax would be replaced with a progressive estate tax with rates ranging from 45 to 65 percent. There would be a 0 percent rate for the first $3.5 million (single person) or $7 million (married couple) of an estate.

7. A 1 percent wealth tax for wealth over $21 million. This would mean wealthy individuals would have to annually add up their net worth and pay 1 percent of any net worth exceeding $21 million to the government.

8. Close S-Corp dividend loophole. There is not much detail as to how, but the proposal is to make it harder for business owners to abuse S-corp status to report what is really ordinary labor income as dividends. It is worth noting that if the capital gains preference is eliminated (another of the proposals), this would not be strictly necessary.

9. Tax offshore profits. This would apply the corporate tax to money corporations are currently holding “offshore” to avoid paying tax on it. This would be a one time thing.

10. A 0.07 percent tax on big financial institutions. Particularly, the proposal calls for a 0.07 percent tax on the covered liabilities of financial institutions with $50 billion or more of total assets.

11. Change treatment of corporate inventories. This would forbid the last-in, first-out accounting method that allows corporations to overstate the cost of their inventories in order to claim a lower profit and pay less tax.

Mr. Nice!
Oct 13, 2005

c-spam cannot afford



It's glorious and would probably work.

Zil
Jun 4, 2011

Satanically Summoned Citrus



It is beautiful and I want to believe.

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Please work.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002


tax-wise all of this looks good (4 is very good) but the devil is in the details for 7 and 9, and 11 seems dumb

I think mandating FIFO accounting instead of LIFO is probably a dumb idea and probably a wash tax-wise (one is good in rising price markets, one is good in falling price markets, but overall i think it just shifts it around instead of really reducing costs), but there might be a specific tax scam im not aware of

LIFO accounting models cash flow much better in industries with highly variable input costs and gives you much more sensible financials

i think it's dumb to mandate medicare for all instead of make it a (much better) option that just drives all the others out, if someone really wants to keep their insurance that they pay for out of pocket i don't see the harm and it makes it much more politically palatable

evilweasel fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Sep 14, 2017

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
Unfortunately it won't happen. The Dems have no backbone.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007



I'm not going to lie. I immediately thought "is this going to save me any money?" and pulled up some paperwork to do the math. I'm a single male <30 making $95k/yr. My plan through work costs me $2,730 / year. If I assume I'm taking the standard deduction (I'm not, I itemize) and ignoring stuff like 401k and other deductions, that leaves me with $84,650 taxable income. So 4% of that is $3,386. I'm not going to sit here and itemize my deductions, but I think I would probably break even after all is said and done.

Edit - I ended up doing it anyways. With itemization, it's around 74k taxable so my Berniecare cost would be <$3k. If even I can break even on this AND end up with way better health care, people that aren't legitimately rich don't have a leg to stand on when they argue "But my taxes!" :qq:

I want to point out something, though - the article lumps everything together when it really consists of three different "options," they're not a single bill.

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-all?inline=file

KillHour fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Sep 14, 2017

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

KillHour posted:

I'm not going to lie. I immediately thought "is this going to save me any money?" and pulled up some paperwork to do the math. I'm a single male <30 making $95k/yr. My plan through work costs me $2,730 / year. If I assume I'm taking the standard deduction (I'm not, I itemize) and ignoring stuff like 401k and other deductions, that leaves me with $84,650 taxable income. So 4% of that is $3,386. I'm not going to sit here and itemize my deductions, but I think I would probably break even after all is said and done.

I want to point out something, though - the article lumps everything together when it really consists of three different "options," they're not a single bill.

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-all?inline=file

Those are three categories of options (based, basically, on who's getting their taxes raised: the rich, wall street, or corporations), not three different options. He's saying they should consider all of those then pick the correct ones overall, not pick one group.

Lote
Aug 5, 2001

Place your bets
An annual wealth tax of 1% on the wealthy is not going to be popular, and there are other ways to raise money that are more popular. The wealth tax on financial institutions of hundredths of a percent being one that would have more support as those companies exist to make money. They could also close offshore loopholes for companies for all that cash that gets bottled up offshore.

Edit: Also, the Democrats should simultaneously be pushing a "Medicare or Medicaid buy in" plan instead of calling it the "government option". Insurance companies attacks on Medicare for All can be easily twisted into support for a Medicare Buy In option and vice versa. No competition -> Offer a government option for insurance -> government competition is unfair and too cheap -> Save money overall with Medicare for all

Lote fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Sep 14, 2017

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


evilweasel posted:

Those are three categories of options (based, basically, on who's getting their taxes raised: the rich, wall street, or corporations), not three different options. He's saying they should consider all of those then pick the correct ones overall, not pick one group.

Ah, that makes sense. I kind of think a flat 4% surcharge is oddly regressive though.

Blorange
Jan 31, 2007

A wizard did it

KillHour posted:

I'm not going to lie. I immediately thought "is this going to save me any money?" and pulled up some paperwork to do the math. I'm a single male <30 making $95k/yr. My plan through work costs me $2,730 / year. If I assume I'm taking the standard deduction (I'm not, I itemize) and ignoring stuff like 401k and other deductions, that leaves me with $84,650 taxable income. So 4% of that is $3,386. I'm not going to sit here and itemize my deductions, but I think I would probably break even after all is said and done.

Edit - I ended up doing it anyways. With itemization, it's around 74k taxable so my Berniecare cost would be <$3k. If even I can break even on this AND end up with way better health care, people that aren't legitimately rich don't have a leg to stand on when they argue "But my taxes!" :cry:

I want to point out something, though - the article lumps everything together when it really consists of three different "options," they're not a single bill.

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-all?inline=file

The best part is that the costs go heavily in your favor as soon as you actually use your coverage, assuming your work plan budget isn't including your deductible.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


Blorange posted:

The best part is that the costs go heavily in your favor as soon as you actually use your coverage, assuming your work plan budget isn't including your deductible.

Yeah, my plan is terrible. I haven't been to the doctor or the optometrist at all because of a $1k deductible and lovely copays. I also have a bunch of cavities that need filling but stuff like paying off debt and house repairs come first. I literally only keep it so I don't have to pay the ACA penalties and in case I get hit by a bus.

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Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Lote posted:

An annual wealth tax of 1% on the wealthy is not going to be popular

disagree unless you mean "because it's too low"

quote:


Edit: Also, the Democrats should simultaneously be pushing a "Medicare or Medicaid buy in" plan instead of calling it the "government option". Insurance companies attacks on Medicare for All can be easily twisted into support for a Medicare Buy In option and vice versa. No competition -> Offer a government option for insurance -> government competition is unfair and too cheap -> Save money overall with Medicare for all

I suspect that's stage 2 of the overton window shifting plan here.

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