This is Jim Capretta writing at National Review Online’s Critical Condition:

A family with an income at twice the poverty line, or $48,000 in 2016, would get $9,072 in federal assistance for coverage – still a substantial sum. But its $7,400 less than the family would get if they earned half as much. The Baucus plan thus imposes an implicit marginal tax rate of about 30 percent ($7,400/$24,000) on wages earned by families in this income range.

And that would come on top of the high implicit taxes already built into current law. Low-wage families with children also get the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC boosts incomes for those with the very lowest wages, but it is also phased-out as incomes rise. Past a certain threshold (about $21,400 in 2016), the EITC is reduced by $0.21 for every additional $1 earned. Throw in the individual income tax rate (15 percent) and payroll taxes (7.65 percent), and the effective, implicit tax rate for workers between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line would quickly approach 70 percent – not even counting food stamps and housing vouchers.

Entry No. 1: Studies show that doctor-owned hospitals are typically more efficient and deliver higher-quality care than traditional hospitals. Further, they give doctors financial incentives to hold down costs and create opportunities to specialize in the delivery of hospital care. So what does Congress propose to do?  Close them down, of course. See New York Times story [here].

Entry No. 2: Ordinarily, Medicare pays for such items as wheelchairs, scooters, oxygen supplies, etc. by relying on a fee schedule determined by the bureaucracy rather than in the marketplace. Yet in a demo project that used competitive bidding by suppliers, Medicare's costs were lowered by 26%. So what does Congress propose to do? End the demonstration and go back to administered prices, of course. [See CMS Fact Sheet.]