Incenting Shit Plans
Ezra Klein has his overview of the Max Tax here. After boasting of the plan’s affordability (!), Ezra’s biggest complaint is the lack of an employer mandate:
The employer mandate is pretty much the free rider plan that the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities tore apart here. It’s bad policy. An addendum though is that individuals whose employers offer them insurance are not eligible for subsidies, unless the insurance their employer offers would cost more than 13 percent of their income. I’d feel better about that if it were lower for low-income workers, but the plan says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services must revisit this number within five years to see if it should be lowered.
I’ll go further and say the Max Tax actually incents employers to offer shit plans. Here’s the whole section on what Bad Max euphemistically calls "Employer Responsibility:"
Employer Responsibility. Employers would not be required to offer health insurance coverage. However, employers with more than 50 full-time employees (30 hours and above) that do not offer health coverage must pay a fee for each employee who receives the tax credit for health insurance through an exchange. The assessment is based on the amount of the tax credit received by the employee(s), but would be capped at an amount equal to $400 multiplied by the total number of employees at the firm (regardless of how many receive a credit in the exchange). Employees participating in a welfare-to-work program, children in foster care and workers with a disability are exempted from this calculation.
As a general matter, if an employee is offered employer-provided health insurance coverage, the individual is ineligible for the tax credit for health insurance purchased through an exchange. An employee who is offered unaffordable coverage by their employer, however, can be eligible for the tax credit. Unaffordable is defined as 13% of the employee’s income. The employee would seek an affordability waiver from the exchange and would have to demonstrate family income and the premium of the lowest cost employer option offered to them. Employees would then present the waiver to the employer. The employer assessment would apply for any employee(s) receiving an affordability waiver. Within five years of implementation, the Secretary must conduct a study to determine if the definition of affordable could be lowered without significantly increasing costs or decreasing employer coverage.