Bush wants to tax people on their company paid health insurance to pay for tax breaks for uninsured

[NNN0LHI]

How about we quit pissing away $4 Billion dollars a day in Iraq and give everyone free health insurance who doesn't have it?

Anyone else like that idea better?

Don

[unpossibles]

1. I don't know what he wants

his speechifying about it last night didn't seem to make any sense.

[ellenfl]

2. we need to yell loud and clear that * is proposing

to raise taxes on the middle class. i wonder what lou dobbs will have to say about this. his emails should be interesting tonight . . . assuming everyone understood what * was saying.

ellen fl

[LiberalEsto]

6. B*sh41 said "Read my lips....

no new taxes" didn't he?

Maybe 43 needs to go read his Daddy's lips again.

[The Deacon]

3. Communist

Next you'll be espousing some nonsense about "one man, one vote" or something.

[Bitwit1234]

7. How could people afford it?

Remember the employer subsidies part of the cost. They are getting breaks because it is purchased in a group of employees and not a single payer and if you go single payer, they insurance company has a better chance to deny you coverage because, say you have diabetis, a heart condition etc. Most places if you have issues like that they insure you as a group and don't reguire investigation into your health issues. And since a lot of people even with employer subsidies still can't afford it, the cost would be too too high.

I think that States should take the initiative...they could offer health insurance to people and families under a certain salary. They people could pay the cost of the premium, say 30 or 40 dollars or a little more a month. then they could go along with the insurance plan like most insurance companies. Co-pay, prescription cost, and specialist etc. This country could offer this themselves if, as was said they were not wasting all the money in Iraq for the benefit of war profiteers.

[PDJane]

4. Why not just go to single payer?

wouldn't that make more sense all around?

[MamaBear]

8. Single payer is too simple.

As Randi says, "In chaos you can steal."

And about those "gold standard" benefits: my company offers an hmo, a point-of-service plan, and the "gold standard" plan. The cost for the gold standard is prohibitive for most. But the greater latitude is needed for some with family members with serious, long-term illnesses. Why should they be taxed for something they pay into (and pay heavily)?

They just want to create more chaos in the U.S., so the corps can continue to rob us blind. Look how well that has worked for them in Iraq ... the stealing, I mean.

Whose interests does * represent? Certainly not those of the mere electorate.

[Horse with no Name]

10. But

You have to wonder if this isn't part of the plan?
Our health insurance has gone up 87% since he took office.
Prescriptions cost more, Premiums cost more, copays cost more, and they cover less.
Now, they want to tax it.
Is it possible that they may just want to add that straw that broke the camels back to force people to drop their insurance plans because they just can't afford it anymore...thus opening the door to their much wanted Healthcare Savings Accounts?

[Vinca]

5. This has got to be one of the stupidest proposals he's made.

It's not like the uninsured are sitting in their houses surrounded by ready piles of cash just waiting for a tax deduction before they buy insurance. If I had a spare $15,000 (which I could later deduct), I wouldn't be uninsured. It's not rocket science.

[AValdoux]

9. The evil plan is...

...is when the Democratic majority in Congress says no to his plan, they can be called "obstructionist". Also the immigration reform is so the GOP congressmen running in 2008, who will be voting against it, can campaign on their new devisive issue (evil brown people. Bush doesn't care if he goes down in flames on domestic issues. They are just setting up the game plan for the 2008 campaigns.


AValdoux

[hashibabba]

11. Hey, it's going to help insure three million people! Three million!

Wow, do his ideas get any better than this one?

Katrina Vanden Heuvel: The State of Healthcare (The Nation)
BLOG | Posted 01/23/2007 @ 5:12pm
The State of Healthcare


According to the Bush administration, the new health care plan that the President unveiled in the State of the Union address Tuesday would cover three million people who are currently uninsured. Three million – out of forty-seven million. After years of dangerous inaction, this is what Bush rolls out to address a grave and growing crisis!

And, of course, no Bush domestic proposal would be complete without a further gutting of the social compact – this time, "cutting Medicaid payments to public hospitals and other ‘safety net' providers by $3.9 billion over the next five years." As Deborah Bachrach, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Health Department, told the New York Times, this cut would impact hospitals "that serve some of the lowest-income, most vulnerable patients." This at a time when many such facilities are already struggling to survive.

The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy survive untouched – in fact, they receive a new deduction if they purchase their own plans. However, the continuing War on the Middle Class is being…well, escalated. Workers who, according to the President, "choose overly expensive, gold-plated plans" through their employers will be taxed, while those who buy plans on their own will receive a deduction. As Columnist Paul Krugman suggested in a Times op-Ed, who in our nation has one of those gold-plated plans? Krugman goes on to write, "The uninsured don't need an ‘incentive' to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible…. Mr. Bush…is still peddling the fantasy that the free market, with a little help from tax cuts, solves all problems."

"The President's so-called health care proposal won't help the uninsured, most of whom have limited incomes and are already in low tax brackets," said Democratic Representative Pete Stark, Chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee. "But it will hurt middle-income Americans, whose employers will shift even more cost and risk to their employees."

And as Gerald Shea, assistant to the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, told The Times, "It would throw into turmoil the employment-based system of health insurance, and it would impose a new tax on the middle class."

Most experimentation (both good, not-so-good, and bad) with health care policy is happening at the state level. The often-touted Massachusetts plan – in the words of Doctors Steffi Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Cambridge Hospital and Harvard Medical School – "offers empty promises and ignores real – and popular – solutions." By requiring every resident of the state to have health insurance or pay a fine while doing nothing to control costs of insurance and care, or setting standards for coverage – Big Insurance wins, and consumers lose. And the middle-class which doesn't qualify for subsidies but can't afford insurance is further squeezed. ....(more)

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=159864