TALKING WITH THE MEDIA ABOUT "A 10-Foot Rope for a 40-Foot Hole" REPORT
May 2002
As President Bush moves back to his domestic agenda, he will once again focus on his plan to give individual tax credits to low-income workers for the purchase of health insurance. Tax credits leave uninsured consumers out in the cold without any choice or control over their health care. Tax credits do not provide working solutions to low-income consumers who most need health insurance.
Tax credits leave consumers without any choices:
- $1,000 health plans were unavailable to healthy, non-smoking 55-year-old women in all but three states.
- $1,000 health plans were unavailable to healthy, non-smoking 25-year-old women in 19 states. Only substandard plans with high deductibles, high out-of-pocket costs, and limited coverage were available in the remainder states.
A tax credit proposal does not solve the problem of the uninsured:
- The tax credit proposal targets low-income individuals since all children living under 200% of poverty are covered under the State Children's Health Insurance Plan.
- Even after the tax credit, a healthy, non-smoking 55-year-old woman living at the federal poverty level ($8,860) would have to spend more than half of her annual income to purchase a health insurance plan.
- In 11 states, premiums for a healthy, non-smoking 25-year-old woman were above $3,000. The highest premiums, a little over $5,500, were found in the states of New Jersey and Michigan.
Tax credits leave consumers with little control over their health care:
- By exploring the few options available to healthy, non-smokers, this report highlights the "best case scenario." People with even the slightest health problems such as allergies face even higher premiums and the possibility of being denied coverage by health insurance companies.
