Cut the Gordian Knot binding the Med Economy!

Gordian knot: an extremely complex, seemingly insoluble problem.

"Cutting the Gordian knot" solves such a problem with a single, bold, decisive action.

The knot isn't insurance. It's unequal taxing.

Unequal Taxing Today

Employer-sponsored medical plans are tax deductible, saving massive money for W-2 employees and material money for their employers. Conversely, Americans who buy their own coverage don't get that deduction. Any Tom, Dick or Harry who works for himself gets the short end of that stick. Any Joan, Jane or Sue who works for herself gets equally shorted.

This massive governance dysfunction must be corrected. It has harmed tens of millions of hardworking, self-reliant Americans for way too long.

Direct-purchase coverage is a reality of life for roughly 10 percent of America, some 36 million people. They stand on the wrong side of a quirk born in 1943, during a wartime wage freeze, and locked into the Code in 1954, three-quarters of a century ago.

That cCon difference is why "good insurance" comes with a boss, why the cost of care is hidden from those who use it, and why every “reform” for seventy years has stacked a new program on a crooked floor.

Bad cCon begets more cCon when the Left gets their way. Obamacare is Exhibit A.

When the tax advantage lives with the employer's plan, control lives with the employer. The boss and HR rule. But it's not just the employer exerting undue control over employees. Provider nucleons (Burkean parlance for Companies) also loom large: the carrier and their pre-auth desk. The result is today’s nightmare medical economy, starting with pre-auths. The household, the little platoon that should hold the dollar, does not.

Equalize Tax Treatment Now!

Equal tax treatment of medical money doesn't require a new Cabinet department. It requires that the Code stop punishing Americans who carry their own coverage. Only Congress can do that. The President should challenge them to do it — in Trump Time.

Plan A

Cut the Gordian knot by giving every American the same tax deduction employees already have. The deduction stays. The hitch moves. What had been a privilege of the job becomes a privilege of the individual. A purer dCon move — inside a world that has long had the deduction — does not exist.

Yes, this expands a cCon mechanism — a tax favor Congress should never have perpetuated. That acceptable price buys a profound benefit: dCon of the medical economy. dCon Healthcare. Accept the price. Reap the vast rewards: happier Americans, a smarter system, innovation unlocked.

About that price: it will be large, some $150 billion a year, albeit directly benefiting individuals who pay for their own healthcare. Good thing the Trump Tariff revenue is now running near $200 billion a year, more than enough. That revenue is theoretically spoken for, but surely there is no higher purpose than to give 36 million Americans a healthcare benefit their W-2 neighbors already have.

Plan B

There is another way to equalize the treatment of medical costs: strip the W-2 deduction, albeit that will dramatically hike taxes on W-2 employees and their employers. Fat chance! Employees will never accept a plan where they pay more for the coverage they already have. They will tell you to get lost, and they will be right. Burkean prudence agrees with them. You do not smash a seventy-year arrangement that people have built their lives around. You move the locus of control. Hence, Plan B is a nonstarter.

Open the Individual Market

Congress should add a second half to the same bill: open the individual market, including across state lines, so the newly equal dollar can actually buy something other than from the local oligopoly. The tax cut without a market is a coupon. The market without the tax cut leaves the coupon in the employer’s pocket. dCon Healthcare puts that coupon in every American’s pocket.

Presidential Leadership Required

This is bigger than an executive order. The employer deduction is statute. A new deduction for the individual is statute. State lines in insurance sit behind McCarran-Ferguson. A President can't rewrite those by signature. But President Trump can go bully-pulpit maxxing.

He goes to the country first. A major presidential address. He names the hitch. He says out loud that nobody on an employer plan is being shaken down — they keep what they have — just that their fellow Americans who buy individual coverage will stand on the same tax ground. Then he asks Congress for a joint session, puts the two-part bill on the desk, and "encourages" both houses to pass it. If they are out, he convenes them.

The session is the megaphone. The votes are still the votes. The Republic stands tall.

dCon Healthcare

This is not another subsidy layered on Obamacare. It is the same deduction the Code already granted, extended to every other American, so control follows the dollar home.

dCon Healthcare is a cause of great national import. It is also the only version of fundamental healthcare reform that can survive first contact with the public.

dCon Healthcare, Mr. Trump, please!

Otherwise Bernie & the DSA will further cCon it through Socialized Medicine: Medicare For All.

Deductions For All

Deductions For All beats Medicare For All six days a week and twice on Sundays.

dCon beats cCon, here, there and everywhere.

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This is Part 1 of dCon Healthcare: Deductions For All. Stay tuned for Part 2.