In Tax Reform, Arnold Kling cites a passage by Sebastian Mallaby that “makes the reasonable point that the labor-left agenda — trade protection, increased unionization, and raising the minimum wage — probably would do little to achieve the supposed goal of helping the poor at the expense of the rich”:
The same argument holds for tax incentives to buy health insurance. Just over a quarter of this subsidy is swallowed by households in the $100,000-plus bracket; far from promoting the wider dissemination of health insurance, it may even reduce it. Affluent Americans use the subsidy to buy all-inclusive health plans, which in turn causes them to throw money at health services; health inflation goes up, making insurance too expensive for poor families. The Treasury estimates that the ranks of the uninsured could be reduced by at least 1 million if the tax deduction for health insurance were capped at a reasonable level.