Bill Clinton was Right: ObamaCare in its Current Form is a Crazy System

During the recent presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was quoted as saying that the current healthcare system in the country (ObamaCare) is a "crazy system." He took a lot of heat for this, but when you see his full quote, what he actually said makes a lot of sense.

 

I was reminded of this so-called gaffe today when a proposed GOP plan for replacing ObamaCare leaked. A key feature of this plan is that instead of means-tested subsidies, the plan uses refundable tax credits that rise with age, not income. Here's a graphic that lays out the benefits.


As you can see, if you are in a low income bracket, especially if you are older with low income, you do MUCH better on ObamaCare. However, at the same time if you are in a higher income bracket ($60,000 and above) ObamaCare is not such a great deal for you. You make just enough money to make you ineligible for subsidies.

This illustrates the problem with ObamaCare. It is basically a benefit program for those with lower income. People who are moderately comfortable--but far from rich--are screwed in this system, especially if you are older. For people like this (I am one of them), the proposed GOP plan is vastly preferable. In my own case, the cheapest plan on our local exchange would have cost me $650 a month and included a $4500 deductible. I viewed this as little more than catastrophic coverage. Under the GOP plan, assuming that nothing else would change, I would pay only $300 a month for the same plan.

This is a persistent problem with Democratic policy proposals. The party consistently criticizes vast levels of income inequality and special breaks for the rich. I strongly agree with this. However, when it comes time for actual policy proposals the party tends to pass legislation that targets benefits towards the poor at the expense of the middle class. If you are rich, then you can afford to pay more, but if you are only moderately successful, then you cannot. What is rich? This is not easy to define, but I would say that at a minimum you cannot be "rich" unless your annual income is in the top 1%, which nationally averages about $465,000 in income annually.

This is an urgent problem that the party must fix. Clinton's idea of a Medicare buy-in for the middle class sounds like a great idea. If Hillary had promoted this idea, then maybe. . . .

An Unhealthy Trend at the Oscars

No, I am not referring to the embarrassing flub last Sunday night when the Price Waterhouse accountants handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope for Best Picture, and La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner.

There is a long-term trend in which the film that wins Best Picture has become less and less a film that many people have actually seen. Consider the numbers. In constant 2017 dollars in the 40 years between 1959 and 1999 the average domestic box office gross for the Best Picture winner was $342 million. Yet, in the 16 years between 2000 and 2016 the average was $139 million. More disturbingly, in the last 7 years from 2009-2016 the average was $67 million, less than 20% of the 1959-1999 average.

Some might herald this trend as evidence of the Academy placing a focus on pure artistic achievement above popular success. I disagree. I think that this trend is unhealthy for the film business in general and certainly toxic for the Academy Awards specifically. Fewer and fewer people watch the award ceremony on television. This year's show attracted only 34 million viewers in the U.S. As recently as 1998, the show drew 55 million viewers--a year when the country's population was 40 million smaller. To the extent that the audience begins to view the Academy Awards as a salon of artists recognizing rarefied and exotic tastes, the ceremony--and by extension the film business in general--will lose its status as an important component of American cultural life. For example, I found the winner of the 2014 Academy Awards, Birdman, nearly unwatchable. The box office receipts of that film suggests that a lot of others felt the same way. In 6 of the last 8 years, the Best Picture winner has earned less than $50 million.

Interestingly, this phenomenon is not entirely due to the Academy recognizing only art house critical favorites. Although Birdman (2014), The Artist (2011), and this year's winner Moonlight (2016) could all be fairly described in this way, the other two films in the sub-$50 million club, The Hurt Locker (2009) and Spotlight (2016) were certainly not art house films. The Hurt Locker is a more or less mainstream war film and Spotlight is a conventional procedural. I suspect that these films suffered from poor marketing campaigns, or, in the case of The Hurt Locker, an reluctance of audiences to go to a film about the Iraq War, which was still an open wound for many in the country.

I certainly don't want to see the Oscars turned into a mere popularity contest along the lines of The People's Choice Awards. But I would like to see Oscar voters at least taking into consideration the cultural impact a film has on the society, while keeping in mind that a film can't have a cultural impact if very few people in the culture are exposed to it.