I've always scratched my head about the logic that surrounds removing the tax exemption on generous health care plans. It seemed like yet another Ponzi scheme that governments employ with increased frequency to satisfy on paper demands for financing projections, fully realizing those revenues will never come to be. In this case, if my employer is gonna be taxed highly for providing me a good health care plan, the inclination will be to move to a cheaper plan, thus decreasing the revenue the government will take in from taxing "Cadillac plans". It seemed breathtakingly obvious even to a slow-witted Midwesterner like myself. Now, the new talking point for "Cadillac health care tax" defenders is that they WANT employers to drop generous health care plans as a means of disincentivizing current levels of health care consumption. HUH?!?!
But the question I'm about to ask is a question that in my mind profiles the contradictory logic of too many health care reform promoters....How can we simultaneously disincentivize health care consumption and advocate for increasing levels of "preventive" health care?
The logic is counterintuitive. The long-stated thesis by Tom Harkin and many others, albeit one I've never bought into, is that a key instigator of rising health care costs in America is the lack of preventive medical practices....the lack of diagnosing future illnesses before they grow into full-blown diseases. How is this achievable by forcing people to become even conservative health care consumers? How is forcing people with "Cadillac plans" to accept worse health care plans conducive to promotion of preventive medicine?
If I'm a union worker with a "Cadillac plan", I would think I'd be more likely to pursue the kinds of preventive medical endeavors promoted by reformers than a worker with a shitty, high-premium plan who would be more likely to avoid frivolous visits to the doctor to screen for diseases that may hypothetically emerge in the future. Yet highly taxed Cadillac plans seem poised to pressure downwardly the quality of health care plans available and thus adding to the ranks of workers with shitty, high-premium plans.
Am I missing something here? How is it possible to simultaneously advocate for reduced consumption of health care and for dramatic increases in preventive medicine?