Congress has begun to look longingly at limiting the tax exclusion on employer-sponsored health benefits, which “cost” the federal government an estimated $225 billion in foregone tax revenue in 2008 . . . since when do these benefits “cost” the federal government anything? They assume that any potential tax revenues they do not get are revenues they are due. Hardly. This federal government’s appetite to consume the wealth of the citizenry taxes is insatiable. They must be put on a diet, before the rest of us have nothing left to eat.
He now says he is open to taxing “millionaires”, as if they alone could pay for the grandiosity of his so called health reform.
He now says he is open to limited deductions for medical care and services as well as limiting deductions for the “wealthy” overall to raise additional funds.
He now says he has reduced the projected 10 year deficit from 9 trillion to 7 trillion dollars. Yep, that is a real improvement.
America works best when it works the way it always has, by the sweat and ingenuity of its people, not by the politically slanted vision of those in Congress and the White House.
Please Mr. President, lead, follow or just get out of the way of Real Health Reform . . . obi jo
President Obama has gone to great lengths not to repeat the mistakes of Bill and Hillary Clinton as he works with Congress toward an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system. But, there are those in the administration and Congress pushing the President to duplicate a strategic blunder in an even earlier reform initiative: the 1988 attempt to add catastrophic care to Medicare.” The Globe notes that “Congress ended up repealing that law in 1989, when part of its funding mechanism, a surtax of up to $800 a year on wealthier seniors, proved wildly unpopular. Seniors had to pay the tax even if they already had catastrophic coverage privately.” Now, “an unpopular measure being proposed to pay for coverage of the uninsured is a new tax on the health benefits workers get from their employers. Health reform financed in this way could suffer the ignominious fate of 1988’s catastrophic care plan.” According to the Globe, “If the President and Congress want to reduce the ranks of the uninsured, they need a way to pay for it.”
Desperate to find ways to pay for a healthcare overhaul that could cost more than $1 trillion over the next decade, Congress has begun to look longingly at limiting the tax exclusion on employer-sponsored health benefits, which cost the federal government an estimated $225 billion in foregone tax revenue in 2008.
Healthcare overhaul could limit tax breaks on benefits – http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/07/04/healthcare_overhaul_could_limit_tax_breaks_on_benefits/
Punting On Paying For Health Care – http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/22/obama-health-care-business-washington-obama.html
Nancy Pelosi: Make millionaires pay for health care – http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25144.html
REHABILITATING HEALTHCARE Spread the pain of paying for healthcare reform – http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-ed-health16-2009jul16,0,225470.story
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One of the many proposals of the Bush administration that never saw the light of day (I found this on the White House website) was an initiative to change the way insurance expenses are managed in business. The proposal was to stop allowing businesses from using insurance expenses as a business deduction.
It would be the first step down a policy trail leading to uncoupling employment from health care. Although I disagreed with a lot about George Bush, this idea struck me as a creative approach to the challenge. For starters, in a global economy the more expenses companies have the less competitive they are in the marketplace. The old joke about Starbucks paying more for health care than for coffee is not a joke. Or that GM is an health care system that also sells cars. (I think that has been corrected now, though.)
The notion that unemployed people should be uninsured strikes me as both stupid and inhumane. And anyone who has faced what happens when COBRA kicks in knows how unrealistic the cost of insurance suddenly becomes.
This part of your post jumped out at me:
“This federal government’s appetite to consume the wealth of the citizenry taxes is insatiable. They must be put on a diet, before the rest of us have nothing left to eat.”
The president said plainly that anyone with an earned income under a quarter million a year will not see tax increases. Thus far, no proposal other than that has been advanced. I never got into six figures myself, but if I had I think I might be able to get by on a quarter million.
Meantime, as I pointed out in another comment, some TWENTY percent of all the country’s wealth and income is being controlled by ONE PERCENT of the population. That is nothing new, incidentally. That maldistribution and more is true in most of the world. What is true, though, is that the top tax rate for Americans has historically been in the sixty to ninety percent range… that is until the last thirty years. Reagan’s “simplification” of the tax tables to only three levels of taxation had the delicious effect of a dramatic decrease in the rate of those at the very top, the ones most able to afford to pay more in a system of progressive taxation.
The result has been measurably lucrative for those at the top: the gap between rich and poor has yawned wider than ever during the last thirty years. I see nothing wrong with asking those most in a position to pay to chip in a bit more. It seems not to be forthcoming depending on the generosity of their hearts.
John, thanks for a thoughtful comment. We have touched on the issue of deductibility of health insurance costs and other medical expenses before. We firmly believe that health insurance costs and all medically related expenses should be deductible for ALL OR NONE. That includes individuals as well as any form of business. However, if there is to be no deductibility then there will need to offsets in terms of wages for workers as well as taxes for business to allow them to function properly and absorb the extra costs brought on by this change.
As for the tax issue, please recall that the 1% you say controls 20% of the country’s wealth and income pays FORTY PERCENT (40%) of federal income taxes. No person who makes $250,000 a years lives on that. After taxes for federal and state income taxes, sales and property taxes and other related community fees and taxes, they are lucky to have half of that left to “live on”. Certainly, would agree they are not suffering, but exactly how much tax is this or ANY government due out of the labors of its citizens, especially its most productive, innovative and resourceful?