It’s late January and Congress is shuffling back to the nation’s capital after an ill-deserved holiday break. I doubt they held too many town halls over their brief reprieve from the nation’s business, because if they had, they would have encountered a heaping helping of Americans who got a 114% increase to their health care premiums for Christmas.
While congressional Republicans sipped eggnog, single-malt Scotch or the holiday beverage of their choice around a roaring hearth, the Affordable Care Act subsidies that gave 24 million Americans access to health care expired. The result for many people was triple-digit increases to their premiums on plans they are locked into for the coming year. ACA customers here in New Jersey got off relatively easy with an average increase in the range of 15% thanks to the legislature having the foresight to invest state resources toward health care costs. Most other states weren’t as lucky.
You know who is lucky? Giant corporations! A shocker, I know. Their subsidies were never in any danger of expiring, like ever. Corporate welfare is nigh-invulnerable, like a tardigrade. In 10 billion years from now, when the sun runs out of fuel and begins the inevitable expansion that will consume the terrestrial planets, Earth included, the federal government will still be subsidizing oil production.
According to a study from the Cato Institute, taxpayers financed $181 billion in corporate welfare last year; that is many billions more than even the most aggressive price estimates for Obamacare subsidies.
Those corporate handouts come in a number of different forms, including direct payments, loans, tax breaks and the like. That $181 billion was doled out to industries of all shapes and sizes, like fossil fuel producers, fisheries, automakers and investment banks, the CEOs of which I assume have fairly comprehensive health plans. It’s no coincidence that they also have lobbyists—great big piles of them.
Tireless legions of lawyers, holders of MBAs and former legislators swaddled in Brooks Brothers roaming the halls of the Capitol in search of willing recipients of their largesse, and finding no shortage.
I’ve always envisioned our elected representatives like baby birds in a nest, straining their fragile little necks in hopes that Mother Bird will hork up a worm into their hungry maws; only instead of a premasticated invertebrate, they get a big sweaty sack of money, or maybe a free vacation. Fun!
The lesson here is that if you are one of the 24 million Americans that just saw your health care costs explode like a SpaceX rocket —speaking of corporate subsidies — you should probably change your name to something like Globodyne Amalgamated Flange LLC. Maybe then Congress will answer your calls.