Author Archive for: emptywheel
About emptywheel
Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
Entries by emptywheel
MaxTax’s Medicare Reforms: Would They Really Reform Health Care?
/69 Comments/in Health Policy/by emptywheelThe MaxTax is largely a Medicare bill attached to 39 pages of private health care reform. To show you what I mean by that, here’s roughly how many pages MaxTax spends on each topic:
Health care exchange and other means to make private care available to the uninsured: 39 pages (including several on preventing tax dollars from being spent on undocumented workers or abortions)
Extending access to the poor and underserved (including expanding
CBO on Co-Ops
/64 Comments/in Health Policy, MaxTax/by emptywheelEzra has posted the CBO’s initial estimates on the costs of MaxTax–some of the assumptions for which seem to pretend that insurance companies will not react in any way to the new rules imposed by MaxTax.
But before I get into what CBO’s assumptions, here’s what CBO thinks of Baucus’ crappy co-op option.
(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because,
The REAL Worst Policy in the Bill
/19 Comments/in Health Policy, MaxTax/by emptywheelEzra continues to claim that the worst employer incentive in MaxTax is the way it fines employers for not covering employees.
Max Baucus’s bill retains the noxious “free rider” provision on employers. Rather than a simple employer mandate that forces every employer over a certain size to provide health-care insurance or pay a small fee, the free rider approach penalizes employers $400 for hiring low-income workers who are eligible for subsidies.
Affordable for Individuals Versus Affordable for Wal-Mart Employees
/58 Comments/in Health Policy, MaxTax/by emptywheelHere’s a scary part of MaxTax, if I understand it correctly. MaxTax still screws employees but rewards Wal-Mart as I’ve laid out in this post and this post. In addition, though, MaxTax imposes much higher standards for affordability on employees who have access to health care through an employer.
MaxTax: Working Thread
/16 Comments/in Health Policy, MaxTax/by emptywheelFatster found Max Baucus’ health care plan here. Use this thread to post what you find.
I’m about 1/10 of the way through. My favorite detail so far is that the Health Exchanges would take your MaxTax–your mandated payment to shitty insurance companies–as a payroll deduction.
For employed individuals who purchase health insurance through a state exchange, the premium payments would be made through payroll deductions.