Friday, June 19, 2009

Universal Health Care Looks Universally Expensive

House Democrats today released their version of the government takeover of the health-care industry, and like "strength through negotiation" and "deficit cutting by deficit spending", it is a pie-in-the sky fantasy that defies logic (but not ideology):

House Democrats on Friday unveiled legislation they said would cover virtually all the nearly 50 million uninsured Americans.

Major provisions of the draft bill would impose new responsibilities on individuals and employers to get coverage, end insurance company practices that deny coverage to the sick and create a new government-sponsored plan to compete with private companies.

But it remained far from clear how the Democrats intend to pay for their plan, even as they vowed to take the legislation to the House floor by the end of July.


Oh, they know how they are paying for it. It's not clear because they're not telling us what they've been discussing in back rooms:

The list of options being weighed by the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, aims to raise some $600 billion over 10 years to partially pay for President Barack Obama's goal of overhauling the nation's health care system to tame costs and cover the 50 million uninsured.

The tax options include:

- Increasing the price of soda and other sugary drinks by 10 cents a can.
- Applying a potential 2 percent income tax increase to single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year and households earning more than $250,000.
- A new employer payroll tax could target 3 percent of employers' health care expenditures.
- Taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits above certain levels - a less likely option but one that still is in the running.


Also under consideration are higher alcohol taxes, increases to the Medicare payroll tax and a value-added tax, a sort of national sales tax, of up to 1.5 percent or more.

And this is on top of the "tax-and-trade" proposals being floated through Congress that will likely cost every family at least $1200/year in the name of "the enviornment" , but with the real goal of giving the political class more of your money to spend as they wish...

Don't think it will happen? White House press secretary Robert Gibbs guarentees it will:

"The president is not going to sign a health care bill that increases the size of the deficit."

The only way to keep the deficit at a mere $1.6 trillion would be to sign the bill with all of the above taxation measures...allowing the president to keep his promises on health care and the deficit while saddling every hardworking American with the costs via addtional daily taxes.

But we exist only to serve The One....

1 comment:

jacksmith said...

AMERICA’S NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY!

It’s official. America and the World are now in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A World EPIDEMIC with potential catastrophic consequences for ALL of the American people. The first PANDEMIC in 41 years. And WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES will have to face this PANDEMIC with the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed World.

STAND READY AMERICA TO SEIZE CONTROL OF YOUR NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

We spend over twice as much of our GDP on healthcare as any other country in the World. And Individual American spend about ten times as much out of pocket on healthcare as any other people in the World. All because of GREED! And the PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare system in America.

And while all this is going on, some members of congress seem mostly concern about how to protect the corporate PROFITS! of our GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT NATIONAL DISGRACE. A PRIVATE FOR PROFIT DISGRACE that is in fact, totally valueless to the public health. And a detriment to national security, public safety, and the public health.

Progressive democrats and others should stand firm in their demand for a robust public option for all Americans, with all of the minimum requirements progressive democrats demanded. If congress can not pass a robust public option with at least 51 votes and all robust minimum requirements, congress should immediately move to scrap healthcare reform and demand that President Obama declare a state of NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY! Seizing and replacing all PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance plans with the immediate implementation of National Healthcare for all Americans under the provisions of HR676 (A Single-payer National Healthcare Plan For All).

Coverage can begin immediately through our current medicare system. With immediate expansion through recruitment of displaced workers from the canceled private sector insurance industry. Funding can also begin immediately by substitution of payroll deductions for private insurance plans with payroll deductions for the national healthcare plan. This is what the vast majority of the American people want. And this is what all objective experts unanimously agree would be the best, and most cost effective for the American people and our economy.

In Mexico on average people who received medical care for A-H1N1 (Swine Flu) with in 3 days survived. People who did not receive medical care until 7 days or more died. This has been the same results in the US. But 50 million Americans don’t even have any healthcare coverage. And at least 200 million of you with insurance could not get in to see your private insurance plans doctors in 2 or 3 days, even if your life depended on it. WHICH IT DOES!

Contact congress and your representatives NOW! AND SPREAD THE WORD!

God Bless You

Jacksmith – WORKING CLASS