“We don’t want people having to work to afford a basic good like health insurance”

2014

Excerpt from opinion column by Ross Douthat, 2-12-14 New York Times.com

The article below talks about health insurance and its relationship to work. What caught my eye is the section I highlighted in bold, “we don’t want people having to work to afford a basic good like health insurance.” How about working to afford a basic good like food, clothing or shelter?

I get the fact many people don’t see the logic of receiving health insurance as part of employment compensation or the tax benefits that go with it, but to assume it (paying for health insurance) can be delinked from work overlooks the fact either employers and workers must pay directly or taxes on wages must pay indirectly for health care coverage.

So it would appear we are striving for a society where nobody has to work for anything. I’m for that❗️

That’s why you keep seeing Obamacare’s defenders argue that the law’s income effect — where people work less because they’re getting insurance benefits at a much-reduced cost — is mostly fine, because we don’t want people having to work to afford a basic good like health insurance. And it’s why, when they talk about the substitution effect — the way the subsidy phase-out creates an effective marginal tax that discourages working longer hours or taking a higher-paying job — they usually concede the existence of a problem, but then argue that the best way to solve it would be to extend Obamacare’s existing benefit further up the income ladder, or make it universal … in each case, at an expense that conservatives would inevitably oppose.

Doesn’t the money to pay the tax subsidies come from people who work? Wouldn’t paying for universal coverage require tax revenue from people who are working? If we reduce or eliminate the tax advantages of employer-provided coverage, aren’t we raising taxes on and lowering spendable income for over a 100 million working Americans?

Enlighten me my liberal, progressive friends, how does all this we can have it all while not having to work thing work? I was never great a math, but this equation really escapes me.