Daily Yopp! 6.27.17 Who Stands to Benefit Most from the AHCA?

We won! We won!

By now you may have heard that the Senate has decided to delay the vote on the AHCA until after the July recess. So that means our efforts to secure fifty-one No votes were successful, right?

Not so fast there. This is more like a stay of execution. The prisoner is still on death row and there will still be a battle when they return. As I see it, McConnell is betting that We the People will get busy with our summer vacation plans and have our guard down when they get back to DC.

So what should we do? In a nutshell, we need to make sure they get the message loud and clear that this bill cannot pass. It's not about partisan loyalty. This one vote even more than most others will tell the voters where your representatives stand. If they support this bill, they don't give a rat's *ss about half our nation's population and think 44% are selfish idiots who don't understand math and will sell their souls for less than $600.

Former Labor Secretary and current UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich explained just how bad Trumpcare is in his most recent Resistance Report. If you have 30 minutes to spare, I highly recommend listening to it. Better yet, subscribe to his podcast. You can also read his thoughts in this post from his website.

The key takeaway for me is this: Trumpcare/AHCA is primarily a tax cut for people making $200,000 or more per year ($250,000 for couples). People making under $55K will suffer tremendously. Those of us making over $55K per year will break about even.

Let that sink in. Then chew on it for a bit. And then wrestle with your soul for a moment. 'Cause here's some more numbers. The average household income in the United States is about $75,000. Knowing that, you might look at that chart and think that it's not that bad...that in fact some people making UNDER the average salary will benefit from the AHCA. Many of us might realize that we personally will be fine under the AHCA.

But let's give you some more math. Because the average or mean does not tell you how many fall under that $75,000 figure. The MEDIAN household salary for the United States in 2013 was $51,939 and the median personal income in 2008 was $29,964. Median means that half of the population makes LESS than that figure. The mean or average is very skewed because of the ridiculous imbalance of wealth that exists right now. (Apologies that I don't have more up to date figures. I'll work on that.)

For more clarity, here's how the Census Bureau explains it: Median income is the amount which divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount. Mean income (average) is the amount obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a group by the number of units in that group. 

According to Robert Reich, "If enacted, [the AHCA] would be the largest single transfer of wealth to the rich from the middle class and poor in American history."

Let's look at more numbers. What percentage of the population will fall into the red zone of the chart below? Turns out that just over 50% of the US population will see a negative financial impact to the 2022 taxes if Trumpcare is enacted. On the other hand, less than 6% of the population will see significant positive impacts. Somewhere around 44% will see very small gains between $60 to $600. That last group is those whose annual income is between $55K and $200K annual.

Let's get real a second for just a millisecond. I know who my readers are. Most of you are in that last group. So I want you to chew on this:

Are you willing to let more than half the US population suffer financially and suffer serious impacts to their health AND allow the top 6% of the population to enjoy significant gains for less than $600 per year?

That's what Trumpcare is about. The poor will suffer, the rich will get richer, and those of us in the middle will sell our souls for less than six hundred bucks.

You decide.