[…] The new regulations won’t have much of an impact on good-quality policies from reputable health insurance carriers. Those plans already provide solid coverage for essential services. But removing the worst policies from the market – or forcing them to improve their coverage – will protect consumers who might otherwise have bought those plans thinking that they were as good as all the other options. And that’s a good thing.
reform
Surtax Not That Much Of A Burden
[…] But let’s look at the actual impact of the tax as it’s currently written in the Senate bill. It wouldn’t take effect until the beginning of 2013, so wealthy Americans would have three years to squirrel away savings before they had to start paying a little extra in taxes. And the actual amount of the tax is set at half of a percent of income above the $200,000 threshold. Let’s consider a CEO who earns a million dollars a year, filing on his own. $800,000 of her income would be subject to the healthcare surtax, at a rate of 0.5 percent. Half of one percent is not a large chunk of anything. In this case, it would amount to $4,000 ($800,000 times 0.005). So we would be asking a person earning a million dollars a year to kick in an extra $4000 to help pay for healthcare. My vote? That is perfectly fair. Her million dollar a year salary puts her above nearly every other American in terms of earnings, and $4000 doesn’t make much of a dent in a million dollars. […]