[MonkeyMama]

I think it does nothing, as usual, to fix the root of the problem. Why is healthcare so expensive? I think a big part is the legal industry - lawyers and lawsuits are taking a lot of that money. How much was your malpractice insurance doctors? IT's crazy! (We have a mostly doctor client base - they are getting paid tons and they are paying six figures at the least for malpractice insurance - these are good doctors who have never had a serious lawsuit. I imagine 1 lawsuit would make it prohibitively expensive to practice mediciane - what do your rates go up to then?).

Anyway, I think the plan sucks.

Right now I get a $7k deduction for our healthcare because we pay about 18% of our income to it. Only the part over 7.5% of our income is deductible, but we still get a big deduction because the premiums are insane.

With the new law we would save $220/month (income and social security tax) on the $875 premiums we can not afford now. When you factor the tax savings and that we would pay $655/month which is closer to the lesser coverage (but still more than it) that we just took. So we could still save a little more but it would still be insanity.

It's better than nothing, might keep us out of a HDHP for a couple of more years. But really does nothing for those who can not truly afford it. For the long-term, lessens the blow, but saving $220month when my insurance just went up $245/month in one year (yes a 40% increase), eh, not sure how it fixes the root of the problem. Nothing else not much more than a temp fix. As usual, seems to be all the government can pull together - temporary fixes.