Unfairness and inconsistency in the tax code! Imagine that.

The self employed person could incorporate then deduct the cost of health insurance from his corporate profits, and pay himself a salary. He has the flexibility to do that in deciding which has the overall lower cost for his situation. Corporations with multiple stockholders don't have that flexibility. Is that fair to the corporation's stockholders?

What would you do as the politician who believed it was wrong/unjust that, say, 15% of the US population didn't have access to affordable health care?

The answer that upsets people about Obamacare was the overhaul of health insurance for the other 85% who were happy with the health insurance system.

When comparing the UK and the USA, it's not correct to say there is no health insurance system in the USA. There is. It works fine for 85% of the population. Well okay, costs and efficiency could be improved, but, as the politician, say what you want to fix in the first instance is access for those without.

The Clintons struggled with this issue and failed. Obama's solution involved changing everything for the 85% who were happy, so he could fix a problem for the 15%. Maybe that was the only way. But the firestorm of protest/debate can hardly be a surprise. Alternatives like expanded Medicaid, or vouchers, or some other way to reach the uninsured were there.

Separately, there is the question of the costs/efficiencies and the ever growing proportion of GDP going to health care for an uncertain result.

The two problems have now been thoroughly mixed together with the ACA. How it will look after the dust settles is anyone's guess. Voters will decide in due course.

Somebody is being overcharged.

Mind you there is a Biblical reference that comes to mind.

Happy until they had the audacity to get sick and got turfed..

Actually, your tax example is incorrect. I've had self employed income and deducted my health insurance premiums. It's not a Sch. A itemized deduction, but a deduction in arriving at Adjusted Gross Income, so not subject to the 10%.

Anyway, you wanted to make a general point about the fact things aren't always equal between the employed and self-employed. And you could come up with other scenarios that show that.

Indeed, which is why the number of voters who prefer the ACA is likely to grow. Which makes me confident that, in the end, some version of Obamacare will persist, even with a change of government. The problem of the uninsured never goes away, even if the members of that group change all the time.

The problem of affordability never goes away.

That is a simplistic answer since incorporation usually only works if the company is large enough to take advantage of a myrad of tax loopholes and other corporate benefits. Silicon Valley startups usually incorporate since they expect to have losses for years but when they go public and become profitable, they get to take all those losses and write those off against their current income. Another reason that Silicon Valley startups incorporate is that they can issue qualified stock options and when the company becomes public, employees can purchase all their stock options at a low price (normally between $0.05-$1.00 per share) and hold the shares for at least 1 year and when they sell them, the gains are treated as long term capital gains.

If it was just as simple as incorporating to gain the benefits of a large corporation, all small companies would incorporate but instead very few do.

Flawed as maybe, but apparently my example was, per Albion (a18ion) above, still a better example than yours!

Apparently the tax law was changed when ACA was passed. That's one of the few things that I missed in the ACA law.

The association was thrilled to lend support to legislation which would simplify taxes for millions of small business owners and address an unfair tax on health insurance premiums for the self-employed.

History of The NASE | A Small Business Association

You mean like the USFL?

He changed things for the 85% for the better in that the pre-ACA scenario of get sick, lose job, lose group insurance, become uninsurable cannot now happen.

The fear of having a single free-rider has too often been an excuse to do nothing to improve access to healthcare. Of course, the "delicious irony" is that this contributes to a system where the uninsured went to emergency rooms for their primary care - a cost usually picked up by taxpayers one way or another.

Indeed, and I'm very grateful, too, since my OH would otherwise be uninsurable. However, if voters aren't yet convinced it must be because this benefit, and others, have not been communicated well. Or, they feel this benefit is a trade-off with some other feature of the current system they prefer. Who knows? Particularly when the media reduce thoughtful reflection to political soundbites.

I think it's difficult to sell something on the basis of what might happen. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of that 85% didn't realize how vulnerable you could be pre-ACA even with employer-provided insurance. Most didn't until it was too late and they became one of the uninsurables. But I do agree that the Obama Administration did - and does - a piss-poor job of promoting the benefits of the ACA.