Understanding the Tax Credits in the American Health Care Act

The American Health Care Act creates a new entitlement program in the form of advanceable, refundable tax credits. Just as with Obamacare, the American Health Care Act relies on government use of its coercive power to transfer wealth from one group of people to another. Further, these advanceable, refundable tax credits – by masking real prices and distorting competition – will distort the market further.

  • “Refundable” tax credits are those that can reduce a taxpayer’s tax liability below zero dollars. In other words, rather than paying any federal taxes, taxpayers whose incomes are so low that they are not required to pay federal income taxes would nevertheless receive a tax credit. That’s not a “credit,” that’s a “subsidy.”
  • “Advanceable” tax credits are credits the taxpayer receives during the course of the tax year, without having to wait until filing his/her tax return the following year.
  • The House GOP bill, the American Health Care Act, creates a new entitlement program through the use of advanceable, refundable tax credits – which taxpayers will be forced to fund in perpetuity.
  • History has shown that entitlement programs, once enacted, are nearly impossible to eliminate. This new GOP-created entitlement program would quickly become another entrenched program for taxpayers to fund.
  • This new entitlement program is another example of a wealth transfer program – a way for government to use its coercive power to take money from one group of people and give it to another group of people, minus a bit taken out for the government’s overhead cost – which we, at Tea Party Patriots, have consistently opposed.
  • Conservative stalwart Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina opposes the American Health Care Act, in large part, because of the new entitlement program. In an interview with CNN, Congressman Meadows remarked: “What is conservative about a new entitlement program and a new tax increase? And should that be the first thing that the President signs of significance that we sent to the new President? A new Republican president signs a new entitlement and a new tax increase as his first major piece of legislation? I don’t know how you support that — do you?”
  • One of the most objectionable aspects of the tax credits is that because the tax credits are tied to income, rather than wealth, even some very wealthy people who do not have employer-sponsored health insurance plans would be eligible for these credits.
  • The American Health Care Act would actually represent a growth in the amount of taxpayer-funded subsidies – the wrong direction for a GOP-led “repeal” bill.

The last thing the U.S. healthcare system needs is another massive entitlement program.