It looks like Walgreen has bowed to customer pressure and decided not to relocate its corporate headquarters from Illinois to Switzerland after all.
Now, regardless of how you feel about our steep corporate tax rate, the labyrinthine loopholes or even overpaid CEOs, what I like about this story is the effectiveness of market forces. In short, the company faced a backlash over their (very real) threat to move overseas — a corporate dodge now common enough to earn its own moniker (tax inversion).
At any rate, the move apparently generated enough outrage and bad press that executives have since announced that despite following through with the Boots acquisition, the company will remain stateside. That, my friends, is market forces at work. No government intervention needed.
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Speaking of which, a new survey from Morning Consult shows nearly 60 percent of voters say eligible exchange enrollees should get their promised subsidies regardless of whether they bought their coverage through a state-run of federal marketplace. In fact, only 15 percent argued to the contrary in the poll.
Granted, this means next to nothing as far as the courts are concerned, since they are beholden to no one. But it does speak to what Congress should be considering — when all they'd need to do is fix a single sentence to make this particular problem go away.
But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? Why fix something you want to fail? I've long since argued that since this law was passed, it should survive or die on its own, without undue tampering. But we've seen hard evidence that where the law was embraced — and exchanges established and Medicaid expanded — the number of uninsureds has fallen dramatically. Whereas, states that fought PPACA every step of the way, Texas and Florida, to name just two, very little progress has been made.
So it's a tough — if not downright misleading — argument for critics such as Scott and Perry to point out what a failure PPACA is while doing everything in their power to sabotage it. In fact, it would be a lot like me refusing to put oil in my new Jeep, and then blaming Chrysler for making such a crappy product when the engine locks up and I get left on the side of the road.
And keep in mind that despite all this expanded coverage, the affordable part of PPACA remains as large as misnomer as it ever was. Whether we're paying now in increased premiums, higher copays or smaller paychecks, or whether we're paying later in higher taxes or even larger premiums, nothing is remotely affordable about this law.
Sure, everyone loves those subsidies — and expanded (and federally funded) Medicaid now — but that bill will come due, for both states and regular taxpayers. And then we'll be left with one hell of a hangover.
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