Pun Salad

A recent tweet-reply to my state's senior US Senator, Jeanne Shaheen:

@SenatorShaheen Bottom story of the day: old people demand continued subsidization from young people.

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) March 9, 2017

Background: one of the provisions of the GOP's repeal-and-replace legislation allows insurers to charge premiums to old people up to five times greater than those charged to young people.

The AARP, demagogic as always, caught on this proposal and slapped the #AgeTax hashtag on it, and off we went. Senator Jeanne is more than happy to go along.

Note that the current Obamacare price controls allow a factor-of-three age-based premium difference. So despite all the heavy breathing, we're really talking about a factor-of-three vs. a factor-of-five. [Added: I should perhaps make it clear that neither regulation is an appropriate the state to make; we're simply talking degrees of hideous road-to-serfdom meddling.]

This Daily Signal article has more info. Key para:

The more accurate characterization is that the Obamacare rating provision “taxes” younger adults by making their premiums more expensive than they need to be, and “subsidizes” older adults by making their premiums cheaper than they should be. Thus, undoing that provision would simply remove a tax on young people and end an artificial (hidden) subsidy to older individuals.

That was the point of my tweet, so far ignored by Senator Jeanne. As I've noted previously about my Congresswoman's Twitter account, Jeanne's also seems to be all-talk, no-listen, never-respond.