I don’t have to prove anything. I asked if that was a way that Bush proposed making health insurance affordable.
These two statements seem incompatible to me. How do tax credits help those on the lower end of the income scale afford health insurance? They pay little tax in any case and their tax credit wouldn’t come close to allowing them to buy health insurance (mine runs over $300/mo.). Tax credits would help those who pay substantial taxes and those are the very people you claim GW doesn’t want the government to help.
Again, people at 300%, 400%, or 500% of the federal poverty level are not on “the lower end off the income scale.” Those are the people whom the Democrats want to make eligible for SCHIP.
No, he doesn’t want them to get essentially free government health care. He has always promoted plans that would help folks better afford health insurance.
Tax deductions, which reduce the amount of your income subject to tax, don’t do much of anything for people at the lower end of the income scale. Tax credits, which reduce the amount of your tax itself by the size of the credit, can make a real difference to them.
The devil is still in the details, though. First, the credit still has to apply if you don’t owe any tax to begin with. And second, if a family lacks the money to buy X now, then a tax credit that will fully reimburse them next year for buying it now still doesn’t enable them to buy it now. I’m not sure how that’s fixable, which is a reason why I’m skeptical.
Isn’t that a good reason for leaving this kind of coverage up to the states? Why should the federal government be involved here? What is it about this problem that requires a federal government to solve it?
Because some states have far less money than others. And the point of insurance in general is to spread the financial burden. And because the more conservative states won’t bother to solve the problem anyway.
Lets please not forget that FPL is, in and of itself, a bull shit number. Please google Mollie Orshansky (who recently died - RIP - I wrote some of my masters thesis on her findings) and then get back to us.
A family of four making around $62,000 (three times the FPL) certainly isn’t poor. A family of four making almost $83,000 (four times the FPL) is without a doubt well into the middle class. Do these folks really deserve to have the government provide health insurance for them, paid for by taxes levied disproportionately on poor people? Look into that and then get back to us.
I’m not going to be responding to the rest of your points in this post primarily because my answer here will in my opinion cover all of them and also because I feel your individual points were not differentiated enough to justify point-by-point response, and finally because I’m generally not in the mood to get into a lengthy process where we both quote every paragraph of one other for 10 pages.
The issue is not one of looking at people as a commodity for society. It is one of dealing with externalities. In a market system, anytime a buyer and a seller engage in business, both benefit. When I buy razor blades, both me and Gillette benefit. If Gillette didn’t benefit in some way, they wouldn’t sell the blades. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t buy them.
That’s all well and good, it means that doing business is good for both sellers and buyers and everyone is happy and the economy gets stronger. However, certain transactions between buyer and seller have costs associated with the transaction that neither buyer or seller have to shoulder in a truly free market. Instead, society has to shoulder the burden of these costs. This can be bad in the long run. If Gillette uses manufacturing processes that cause massive amounts of pollution, that causes large costs to society. Sans pollution regulations or pollution taxes, the cost of that pollution doesn’t became part of the transaction, neither me or Gillette has to shoulder any of the burden. By implementing pollution controls/taxes, forcing Gillette to clean up their act and et cetera, it shifts at least some of the costs of that pollution into the transaction between buyer and seller. What it will usually mean is Gillette has to sell at a lower margin or they have to raise the price (which may mean the product is no longer something I want to buy, it all depends.)
In bringing up long-lived people, or when you talk about banning sports, you’re entering an area irrelevant to anything I’ve said. I’m not proposing we tax people for being unhealthy or tax people for being fit. I’m not proposing we ban smoking or junk food. I’m saying we should try to associate the costs of negative externalities with the transactions that create them. In so doing we have to consider various things. Is there clearly a negative externality associated with a transaction? Is it feasible to associate that externality with the transaction through taxation? Is it desirable to do so? All of these enter into the equation. How would you tax those who live long lives? I guess you could levy excise taxes on healthy foods, on gym memberships, on sports equipment, and et cetera.
I think that in the case of gym memberships, consumption of health foods, and such transactions the positive externalities are significant and outweigh the negative externalities.
It isn’t realistically feasible to associate the costs (or even benefits) of all externalities with their associated transactions. So, as a society we have to pick and choose. In general I think society is right on the mark, and that it is better to do this with transactions like the purchase of tobacco products than it is with the purchase of gym memberships or health food. Part of the reason is, while there very well may be positive externalities to tobacco transactions and negative ones to gym memberships and health food purchases, there is an extremely clear link between tobacco products and the costs associated with them. Such a link does not exist to the same degree with most other products. “Youth Sports” isn’t a transaction. It clearly has serious costs associated with it, but what product would we levy a tax on that is clearly linked to those costs? Cleats, helmets, bats, balls, knee pads? Many of those products can clearly decrease costs to society because they work to prevent injury. Whereas in normal usage you cannot use tobacco products without causing some level of societal harm. Furthermore an excise tax on tobacco products is more effective at helping society recoup costs because tobacco users have to continually purchase their product. People who participate in sports do not, and in fact many sports can be participated in with no commercial products at all.
I think it should be vetoed. The bill itself is fundamentally dishonest. It’s simply a legislative attack on tobacco cynically labelled as an attempt to “help children.” the real target isn’t so much cigarettes as cigars. Top tax on cigars goes to $10 per cigar.
I really resent this kind of thing. If you think tobacco is bad go ahead and legislate against tobacco. Because one claims to be helping the children does not make tobacco a valid target if it wasn’t before. Socialized health care for children isn’t suddenly a great idea if we can get smokers to pay for it and hurt the tobacco industry.
Most importantly, I hate the obvious cynical and dishonest tactic of linking these things this way so that when a bad and dishonest bill gets vetoed, the knee jerk Bush bashers can go crying about how Bush doesn’t care about the children, which, by the way, is probably the ultimate ppont of this whole stupid bill anyway.
Martin, you analysis is right, but studies indicate that smokers impose only about a 32 cent per pack cost on society. Smokers already pay society for their externalities plus a lot more when they buy a pack of cigarettes. The current proposal to increase tobacco taxes is simply a cynical way to raise money and has nothing to do with attempting to make tobacco users pay for the externalities of smoking.
Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes I lose track of the various beverage sizes since the “standard” seems to have changed so much in my life. When I was a kid the 8 oz. bottle was fairly standard, and if you look at packaging the standard “serving size” on the nutrition facts of soft drink containers is 8 oz.
Correctly stated a can is 1.5 servings (although cans are often labeled as Serv. Size 1 Can) and usually has 150 calories (if it is Coca-Cola.) A 20 oz. is 2.5 servings and has 250 calories. An 8 oz. bottle (if you can find them) is 1 serving and is 100 calories.
That’s entirely possible, although I believe it is difficult to impossible to totally quantify all the costs that smokers create.
In my lengthy argument with Sam I did get away from my original point somewhat, in explaining that my support for general excise taxes is because they can help associate the costs of externalities to the transactions that produce them.
However, I’m also entirely in favor of levying taxes just to increase government revenue on a case-by-case basis if it can be clearly demonstrated we need said revenue. I’m generally not a big fan of any taxes per se, but when it comes to taxation I do recognize there are times we have to levy taxes and that there are government programs we do have to fund.