John Goodman’s Commentaries
Tax Law Changes: Good, Bad and Ugly
The good: People can contribute to IRAs regardless of age, 401(k) balances can be converted into annuities and retirees can go another year and a half before there are required withdrawals from tax deferred accounts. The bad: heirs are required to withdraw deferred accounts more quickly (10 years). The ugly: industries that agreed to be taxed in order to fund Obamacare get their taxes rescinded, without any reform of the mess they helped create.
Goodman: Tax Reform for the Middle Class
We need to remove the most unfair, most anti-work, most anti-saving provisions of the tax code – ones that burden the middle-class. These include a social Security earnings penalty that can push senior workers into a 95% marginal tax rate, a tax on nonsocial security income that even hits tax-exempt bonds, and unfair restrictions on part-time workers and the self-employed.
Tax Reform For The Middle Class
We need to remove the most unfair, most anti-work, most anti-saving provisions of the tax code – ones that burden the middle-class. These include a social Security earnings penalty that can push senior workers into a 95% marginal tax rate, a tax on nonsocial security income that even hits tax exempt bonds, and unfair restrictions on part-time workers and the self-employed.
Opioids Are Killing Us: Here’s What We Can Do About It
Written with Larry Wedekind, Goodman writes: The treatment of choice, almost everywhere, is called Medication Assisted Treatment (M.A.T.) and it involves substitute drugs. It has an 80% failure rate. There is a treatment that involves microcurrent neurofeedback and a recovery support team. It costs one-fifth as much and has a high probability of success. What the Trump administration can do: create CPT (payment) codes for this new method of treatment. What Congress can do: reform the Obamacare exchanges.
Surprising Economics of Surprise Medical Bills
Surprise medical bills arise when hospital patients discover that certain fees are not covered by their health insurance. The reason for the surprise is that the patient’s insurance company and the hospital itself list the hospital as “in network.” Then, when the bill is presented, the patient discovers that certain doctors or certain services were “out of network.” As I wrote previously, in a free health insurance market this would rarely happen. Do you know of any other insurance market where this is a problem? I don’t.
Republicans Have a Health Plan – Finally!
Nearly 150 House Republicans have signed on to a health plan that matches very closely the Goodman Institute plan developed for Donald Trump. It includes personal and portable health insurance, 24/7 access to a personal doctor, telemedical care in the patient’s own home, flexible Health Savings Accounts and a real market for the chronically ill.
The People’s Choices for Health Reform
Our reform framework was developed from extensive market research into demonstrated patient preferences. It draws on inputs from more than 25,000 patients, doctors, and health care professionals to determine what
stakeholders instead of politicians want from a health care plan. It is the first health care reform plan that comes directly from people rather than from Washington backrooms. Written with Alfredo Ortiz.
Why Not Try Free Market Health Care?
Find a health care sector where there is no Medicare, no Blue Cross and no employer and it is probably a market that works very well. Lasik surgery is one example. Patients get a package price and they know what they are going to pay in advance. Competition works. Over the past decade, the real price of Lasik surgery fell 25%. A similar story can be told about cosmetic surgery.
What is modern Liberalism?
If you ask liberals what they think, they will tell you they are against racism (especially segregated public schools); they favor clean air and clean water; they want to help the poor; they oppose inequality, etc. Yet if you look at what happens where liberals govern, all these problems seem to be worse than they are anywhere else.
What’s Wrong with Private Health Insurance?
Bernie Sanders wants to get rid of private health insurance. Quite a few Democrats, including a number of presidential candidates, seem to agree. But why? What’s wrong with private health insurance?
A lot of things, it turns out. All too often, private health plans have perverse incentives to underprovide to people who get sick — incentives that are created by unwise government regulation. However, government insurance often faces the same incentives and the results can be even worse.