A Man With a (Non-)Plan

Rudy Giuliani's health care "plan" is less a good-faith reform proposal than a cudgel with which to bash liberals.

Ezra Klein
American Prospect

I'm supposed to be writing about Rudy Giuliani's health care plan today. And I would, if Rudy Giuliani had a health care plan. But Rudy Giuliani doesn't have a health care plan. What he has is a pretext with which to attack the Democrats. Indeed, just about all you need to know about Giuliani's thoughtfulness on the issue can be summed up by the following: In the speech introducing and detailing his new health care proposal, Giuliani refers to the "Democrats" six times. "Single-payer" is said eight times. "Socialized medicine," or some variant thereof, makes nine appearances. "Uninsured" is never uttered -- not once.

But we'll get to the speech in a moment. First, it's worth wondering why anyone is even crediting Giuliani with a health care plan. The New York Times headlined their story "Giuliani Seeks to Transform U.S. Health Care Coverage," before telling us, in the tenth paragraph, that "Mr. Giuliani's speech offered very little in the way of specifics. He said his goal was to outline his 'vision,' with more details to come in the fall." I guess the headline "Giuliani Seeks to Transform One-Seventh of Economy, Couldn't Be Bothered to Offer Details on How" wasn't snappy enough?

Failure of the press aside, let's examine this "vision." What Giuliani offered is this: A tax exclusion of up to $15,000 for families, and $7,500 for individuals, to help pay for health care. What Giuliani is relying on is people reading those numbers -- $15,000 and $7,500 -- without noticing that they don't denote the amount of money he's offering them, but the amount of money he's not taxing them on. And when we plug it into my magical Rudy Translation Machine (constructed with the help of friendly neighborhood economist, Dean Baker), we can watch how $15,000 can easily become … zero.

Let's stipulate a family of four -- a mom, a dad, and two children. The type of family Republicans like. And let's say your household income is $30,000 a year. Giuliani's tax exclusion will save you … nothing. Your income isn't taxable anyway. Bring it up to $40,000 … and it's still nothing. Your child tax credits are crossing out your taxable income. Indeed, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 55 percent of the uninsured don't earn enough money to have any taxable income. This proposal -- unless changed from a straight exclusion to a refundable tax credit -- will do literally nothing for them.

(Continued here.)