I feel like we need a perpetual PSA here that moving money from person A to person B obviously doesn't make anything cheaper.
No, but it means I can't pay for a first-class ticket while someone else survives. I'll take that deal.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/17/aca-enhanced-subsidy-lapse-g...
I don't want my tax dollars wasted on subsidizing them. Give the money to someone who actually needs it.
(Of course the real problem is healthcare costs accelerating out of control. Insurance subsidies won't fix that problem. In fact they make it worse by encouraging healthcare providers and drug companies to raise prices even faster.)
These are legitimate complaints. Trashing the system because it's overly generous in some respects is insane.
This is all before including the other large personal expense (housing) for this person is likely imputed rents from homeownership which aren't counted as income but function that way.
A substantial amount of discussion in early retirement communities is about how to stay below 400% AGI, which is why I found it odd to see a criticism of healthcare subsidies going to early retirees in the context of the expanded subsidies.
> Give the money to someone who actually needs it.
Like billionaires. They are the ones that really need it, and they get it; every time. Those yachts don’t pay for themselves.
If anyone thinks poors will be getting any help, they are fooling themselves. Helping poor people is quite unpopular, in the US (where they conveniently forget that most of them are born in the US white, but politicians make it seem as if they are all dark-skinned immigrants). Many of the hardest-hit states will be ones that enthusiastically voted for this.
(You can even Venmo)
If you want to do it, do it for real, instead of just being performative.
But don’t try to force everyone to follow your performative pseudo gift.
How is this relevant? Cutting the deficit doesn’t solve the problem. And the folks who created this mess just blew out the deficit by trillions.
If they want to constrain their own choices to help a nameless “someone,” they can literally do that themselves without involving the taxpayer at large. Just send the check to HHS or to a specific charity or individual.
Now, you have a lot more angry people, and hopefully that leads to real reform, because what we have now is unsustainable, even to upper middle class families.
Wait, what changed in 1985?
Before this I recall seeing $7 taken out of my paycheck and there were no deductibles or copays. Meds were $5.
[0] actually a better effect - the govt actually does force lower prices, whereas competition is subject to all sorts of other effects where it doesn't actually function to lower prices.
The underlying issue is inflation adjusted healthcare related spending increased 6x per person since 1970. Some of that is an increase in quality, but middleman are a huge factor.
B) Biden papered over A) with "temporary" covid subsidies in 2021 and those are going away, revealing A) again
Unsubsidized bronze plans were in the $250-350 range in 2016/2017. That's nowhere near rent.