I think that the tax credits are going to stay regardless. My employer gets one, and has for many decades. That’s great for those of us that work at large companies. But that benefit doesn’t help the small business or sole proprietor much at all.
Tax credits are a massive new entitlement that just further distort the already distorted healthcare market.
It is a mistake that we have tax deductibility for employer provided insurance, as that distorts the market as well. But there is no difference between tax credits and outright subsidies. That only compounds the error with how employer provided insurance isn’t taxed as the regular compensation that it should be taxed as.
The result of that has been to create massive third-party inefficiencies that remove market signals and price discovery from the healthcare market. That your employer deducts it is, however, something completely different and right—that is deducting a business expense so they just pay taxes on their profit.
Oh, and what your employer gets is in no way a tax credit. It is just a routine tax deduction for a business expense.
That Trump, on top of the three phases, “repeal and replace” when they’re not really repealing, trying to hook us on the tax credits, etc., further tries to dangle these great tax cuts we’re going to get if only we will let and encourage our Congressional reps to back the further destruction of our national healthcare markets is just insulting. Really offensive that he thinks we’re that stupid and easily bought off.