Obama Health Care Plan?

[pantheon]

Please help me fight my ignorance on this topic.

I was surprised when a friend of mine “informed” me that Barack intended to institute socialized medicine, and that our taxes would be ~50% of our income “just like the Canadians” as a result.

I have a generalized idea of what socialized medicine is, but in trying to see how true this might be, I came across everything from sources stating that Obama just means to subsidize health care and expand coverage, to shrieking crys of socialism and doom.

I told my friend I had a great resource here in this message board, and that I would try to learn the Straight Dope on this.

Can anyone please point me to some cites that seem objective, and perhaps explain in layman’s terms what Barack’s expressed specific intentions are regarding health care, and how this might impact taxes and the common citizen?

I’m also happy to read any sources which might claim that his expressed intentions don’t match his track record, or contradict themselves (his expressions, not the sources lol), etc. as long as they are not obvious biased nuttery.

In other words…I’d like some good sources to research this myself. I’d also love to hear informed opinions and personal experiences from Canadians or other countries with ‘socialized medicine’ (scare quotes reflect my confusion as preliminary googling shows the term is used rather broadly from we-all-share-all-costs to HMOs to any subsidy at all). FTR, I’m a Ron Paul guy, so I’m honestly not looking to defend or besmirch Barack; I simply wish to fight my ignorance.

(if there was a good thread on this I missed in the profusion of political threads, please link!)

[Szlater]

There was a good thread about people’s experiences under universal healthcare (Canadian and UK in particular) here.

[Athena]

Here’s a direct link to Obama’s health care plan.

[Balthisar]

@Athena

Here’s a direct link to Obama’s health care plan.

The only mention of where to get the money is by taxing large employers who don’t already contribute a significant portion to their employees. That’s not a plan. It’s like me saying that I’m going to build a body-on-frame SUV with a plug-in hybrid drive system that get 70 mpg while on gasoline, robotic guidance, bullet-proof, submersible, and calling it a plan.

No, seriously. Much of my job is planning. Saying what you want without describing how to get there isn’t a plan. It’s a sales brochure.

I’d love to see a plan. The brochure doesn’t look too scary after all.

[Athena]

@Balthisar

The only mention of where to get the money is by taxing large employers who don’t already contribute a significant portion to their employees. That’s not a plan. It’s like me saying that I’m going to build a body-on-frame SUV with a plug-in hybrid drive system that get 70 mpg while on gasoline, robotic guidance, bullet-proof, submersible, and calling it a plan.

No, seriously. Much of my job is planning. Saying what you want without describing how to get there isn’t a plan. It’s a sales brochure.

I’d love to see a plan. The brochure doesn’t look too scary after all.

Dude, I was just providing some info and providing the OP with some sources for research. If you don’t like the info, fine. But that’s not the point of this thread.

That said, from this document:

Q. How will we pay for the Obama plan?

A. The Obama plan will realize tremendous savings within the health care system to help finance the plan. The additional revenue needed to fund the up-front investments in technology and to help people who cannot afford health insurance is more than covered by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for people making more than $250,000 per year, as they are scheduled to do.

Obviously that may have to change, given the current economic crisis. But that, at least, was his plan for paying for it.

[Ca3799]

http://www.change.gov/

[Balthisar]

@Athena

Dude, I was just providing some info and providing the OP with some sources for research. If you don’t like the info, fine. But that’s not the point of this thread.

Dude, don’t get so uptight. You posted something saying it was a link to Obama’s plan. It’s not a plan. I didn’t express a like or dislike for the info. The very point of this thread, though is “what Barack’s expressed specific intentions are regarding health care, and how this might impact taxes and the common citizen?”, and so you’re no where close to addressing the point of this thread, either.

[Athena]

@Balthisar

It’s not a plan.

Yes, it is a plan. It might not be to the level of detail that you’d like, but it is, indeed, a plan.

[Gorsnak]

The total tax burden on Canadians isn’t really any higher on average than in the US.

[Cerowyn]

@pantheon

I was surprised when a friend of mine “informed” me that Barack intended to institute socialized medicine, and that our taxes would be ~50% of our income “just like the Canadians” as a result.

Canada does not have socialized medicine. We have a single insurer system, where the insurance company is a policy-based Crown corporation (as opposed to profit-based) run by each provincial government. And, tax burden generally a good deal less than 50% of our income; the highest federal tax rate is 29%, and our top bracket (generally >$120K) combined provincial & federal rates are between 39% (Alberta) and 48.8% (Quebec).

[gonzomax]

Weird that corporations bitch about the cost of health care making it more difficult to compete ,yet as repubs staunchly fight a government plan that would remove the cost from them.

[Balthisar]

@Athena

Yes, it is a plan. It might not be to the level of detail that you’d like, but it is, indeed, a plan.

By that logic, a kid’s Christmas wish list is a plan. :rolleyes:

[pantheon]

Thank you for the information and feedback. I did read the linked plan, which was more specific information than I had seen, but admittedly not as detailed about how it would be financed as I might have hoped. All in all, though, more info than I had for which I am grateful.

I also read the linked thread and gained some perspective from dopers living in countries with different health care systems, so thanks for that too. Good insight.

I did find this too, for what it is worth (self-explanatory URL, so I won’t encode it): Economy of Canada - Wikipedia

I was surprised to see [per article above, to qualify] that while Canada’s health care system is 70% government funded, the US is almost 50% itself (Medicare/Medicaid). In an optimistic sense, the efficiency and savings of the plan I read could help offset the tax burden on average citizen.

I don’t know how strong of a source globeandmail.com is (I’m unfamiliar with them), but this was an interesting article about Obama vs. McCain tax plans.

And seemingly in contradiction (but with the hardest hits on ppl who make 250k+) the WSJ ran this article.

I’d love to see more sources/cites or again, even opinions of dopers on how this plan will effect taxes in the US.

[control-z]

According to his change.gov site:

Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.

But isn’t that how he’s going to pay for everything he’s promising? Just how much money are we going to get from these 5% of wealthiest people?

[cckerberos]

From factcheck.org:

In a move not seen since Ross Perot in 1996, Obama offered his closing argument in a half-hour infomercial on Oct. 29. Among his more eye-opening statements was his claim to have “offered spending cuts above and beyond” the cost of his proposals. Obama is one-upping himself: When he accepted the Democratic nomination, Obama said that he would “pay for every dime” of his new programs with spending cuts. We called the claim misleading two months ago. It’s no truer now. Independent budget experts say that Obama’s proposals will increase the already swollen federal deficit substantially.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget just revised its “Promises, Promises” guide, and now says Obama’s tax and spending proposals – in the unlikely event that Congress enacted them unchanged – would add anywhere between $262 billion and $316 billion to the federal deficit in 2013, the final year of the next president’s first term. The CRFB has increased its estimate of the likely cost of Obama’s health care plan and now figures it could cost anywhere from $52 billion to $106 billion per year when fully phased in.

The CRFB’s full report with detailed estimates can be found here.