Too Much of a Good Thing

Igor Volsky looks at how much subsidizing we would do in an ideal health reform and comes to the conclusion that in principle subsidies should be available for people earning up to 500 percent of the federal poverty line. That’s a pretty high figure. For the sake of context:

500 percent of the poverty line for an individual is slightly over the median household income. And 500% of the poverty line for a family of four is quite a bit over the median. It’s unlikely, in practice, that congress is going to pony up this level of funds. But I think what it illustrates is mostly just that in an ideal world we’d be constructing a real universal health care system where everyone pays taxes, and then out of the taxes a level of health insurance is provided to everyone. That, it seems to me, is where the logic is pointing you once you’re actually subsidizing a majority of people. For now, though, that’s not where the politics are so what will be will be. And what will be will almost certainly be less generous than this.