i want to thank the freedom caucus

thanks to you millennial's will continue to be forced to buy health insurance or pay a fine. employer's will continue to hire part time workers to avoid the over 50 employee mandate.

on the plus side republicans won't be running in 2018 having just scrapped pre existing condition coverage for 5 million americans and dropping maternity coverage in the individual health insurance market.

to be honest i really was never that exercised over obamacare because it didn't effect me. i have employer large group insurance and believe it or not my dependents were covered until age 26 before obamacare. rand paul's and the heritage foundation's "bold" new plan might have. so i am glad it died.

all obamacare ever did was standardize the individual health insurance market in a way that the small and large group market have been standardized for nearly two decades.

that's why premiums have gone up dramatically because you're having to buy more insurance than in the past. the imputed value of my plan was 22k last year, my employer picked up 15k of that cost. the average family plan in the exchanges run 12k per year with a 6k deductible that's 18k a year still less than my insurance.

yes that's expensive good health insurance is expensive.

the individual market for health insurance is between 5-7 million people per year and they are about 90% self employed and they are able to deduct their premiums on line 29 on the front page of their 1040 as an adjustment to gross income. that means they are paying in pre tax dollars just like me.

this is rand paul's plan and it's just a carbon copy of heritage foundations plan that's been floating around the hill since 2009.

Individuals who receive health insurance through an employer are able to exclude the premium amount from their taxable income. However, this subsidy is unavailable for those that do not receive their insurance through an employer but instead shop for insurance on the individual market.

Equalizes the tax treatment of the purchase of health insurance for individuals and employers. By providing a universal deduction on both income and payroll taxes regardless of how an individual obtains their health insurance, Americans will be empowered to purchase insurance independent of employment. Furthermore, this provision does not interfere with employer provided coverage for Americans who prefer those plans.

let me translate that for you, "we are going to incentivize your employer to give you a stipend and dump you in to the individual market were you will not have pre existing condition coverage."

no thanks.

the biggest losers in all of this is the freedom caucus at the end of the day they're 30 members out of 237 republicans. they effectively neutered themselves. moving forward it will be much easier to simply reach across the aisle and work with democrats to simply fix what's wrong with obamacare.