I’m pro public option, but I’m getting tired of people talking about “free health care.” This seems connected to the “big pot of money somewhere” theory of how government works.
Whenever you ask for something, the money comes from other people. And yes, I know there’s a bunch of rich people who we can bleed for everything, but that still doesn’t make it “free.” It’s not free. It costs money, and the government will have to collect that money from other people.
This isn’t a liberal or conservative idea. It’s just a fact. And we can have more productive conversations about things if we use facts.
It’s pretty interesting that when opinion polls ask if they want government-provided free healthcare, then most people say yes. When you ask people if they want to pay the taxes necessary to support this healthcare, they say no. Parties spin this various ways but the fact is that people want free lunches.
Which partly means that the UHC debate is a competition to see how long you can convince people that the costs will be minimal.
That’s pretty much the way it is for everything. We want better schools, protection from terrorists, better roads, better healthcare, less crime, etc. etc.
But does anyone want to pay for it? Heck no.
Who specifically are “people”. Googling the phrase gives a bunch of cites that “health care isn’t free” on the front page.
Most people use some variation of “Universal health care”, I can’t think of anyone saying the proposed health-care reform will give people “free health care”, especially since I think most of the proposals on the table now involve people more or less directly buying insurance from either private companies or the gov’t, so it won’t even “seem” free (except to the poor, of course, but then for them Medicaid is already more or less free).
Well it’s free if you don’t pay any taxes and are not employed, isn’t it?
Right now the bottom 50% of people filing returns with a positive AGI pay only about 3% of all taxes* and a bunch more pay no taxes at all (for instance, folks w/ no income or a negative AGI, or folks who filed just to get a stimulus check, or folks who didn’t file at all…), so government-paid healthcare would be pretty much free for many …unless Mr Obama raises their taxes. However, he has committed not to raise taxes of any kind a single penny for anyone earning less than $250,000/yr so that does not seem likely.
Note that I am not defending the current bizarre system, but I am pointing out that healthcare might, in fact, be free or nearly free to a rather large segment of the population, depending on exactly how premiums would be paid for. If money currently paid for healthcare by employers goes to premiums, then of course it’s not the case that employees are getting a free government ride; in effect money spent on their healthcare premiums is not available for their salaries.
Or that it will be less than they pay now; just because it won’t be free doesn’t mean that it won’t be cheaper. Or that they will be able to get the health care they need that they can’t get now.
Actually both Tim Geithner and Larry Summers on the Sunday shows seemed to be laying the groundwork for a reversal of this promise - so if I were you I wouldn’t make any forecasts based on this being a hard and fast rule.
Now it is true that Gibbs was out there today saying this commitment was still in place and that Summers and Geithner spoke out of turn. I don’t think this is true - Obama previously floated a trial balloon about taxing health benefits in May.
I could see either Geithner or Summers getting ahead of the administration on this question - but not both of them. This was a trial balloon for Obama breaking his promise.
Oh Christ, you people are unreal. Right now take two families making $35,000 a year. One family’s employer provides healthcare and the other doesn’t. The family without healthcare pays for insurance with aftertax money, and the other gets a form of compensation which is not taxed. This is clearly not “fair” in any sense of the word. So if the tax code is changed to tax the “compensation” of healthcare, then you are going to say that Obama is breaking his taxes not to raise taxes? There are all sorts of adjustments to the tax code made every year. This particular one is well overdue, and should be made. It could be made revenue neutral by lowering the tax rate, but someone is going to pay more tax and someone is going to pay less even in that case.
Can’t you get your head out of your ass long enough to look at things with any sense of reasonableness? We are on the cusp of a historic moment in which we can improve access to healthcare and begin to get a handle on the rise of healthcare costs and all you people can do is try and play “gotcha”. Someday your kids will ask you what side you were on in the healthcare debate. Are you going to be able to look them in the eye and say that you tried to make constructive comments to improve things, or will you have to say that your role was just to try and fuck things up as much as possible because your side didn’t win the election.
Pardon me? What did I say that was so unreasonable here?
Oh, and BTW, that perfectly reasonable point you made about healthcare and taxes was the basis for John McCain’s proposal that all healthcare benefits be taxed - a proposal brutally attacked by Barack Obama. So if you favor such a notion, perhaps you ought to consider which list of “you people” you wind up on.
And yet, I didn’t see you respond to multiple sites stating that our system of taxation as a whole is more or less fair (neither progressive or regressive). Almost everyone pays their “share” of taxes. Of course rich people pay more since they make more.
Regardless, that doesn’t mean anyone thinks health care is free in an absolute sense. It’s would be free in the same way the bread is free at a restaurant.
And I was offended and shamed by that stance. It was a low point in a campaign that managed to stay positive for the most part. In this case I also slam Unions who oppsed taxing healthcare benefits.
What you said that was so unreasonable is to say that removing the exemption for healthcare benefits is a way of “raising taxes”. I suppose limiting the ability to expense business lunches was raising taxes too.
But talk of “bleeding” isn’t helpful either. We spend almost twice as much per capita on health care costs as any other advanced nation, while simultaneously not receiving better care, nor even covering the entire population. Reforming the health care system is not going to cut costs by 50% (too much institutional baggage), but it will save us a helluva lot of money. The government will be spending more on health care afterward, but we as a country will be spending less overall.
No, they do pay taxes. They dodge federal income taxes, but they’re taxed regressively in other ways. Add that together, and what appears to be a strikingly progressive taxation system flattens out a great deal. This essentially means that the poor and middle class are paying a disproportionate share for local schools and roads and such, while the rich pay a disproportionate share for federal services like the military. But it’s not at all fair to imply that the poor aren’t paying their share. They absolutely are.
And he’s also taken back his promise to reverse the Bush tax cuts prematurely. He didn’t want to raise taxes in a recession, because he looked at the situation as it changed in front of him and he changed his mind. This is a good thing. It’s better to respond to new situations than become dogmatically attached to what we used to believe.
The same thing could happen with other taxes, after we get a better idea of what sort of shape we’re in after this recession.
Is the argument we can’t afford it, or the government will fuck it up, or both?
As far as affording it goes, we’re paying for it anyway, in the larger sense. The money spent for health insurance is still spent, and a portion of that goes to profit. Now, however much that may be (and they seem to do quite well), that money is not going to care for people. Which is the point of the exercise, no? So we already spend that and thus ensure the patriotic fervor of their executives and stockholders, which is demonstrated by the free hand of giving displayed in their lobbying. But anyway, its gone. Spent.
Then there’s however much we squandor on emergency room treatment that could have been avoided by minimal preventive treatment. How many future burdens to society are born of inadequate pre-natal care, due to inadequate insurance? And, of course, how many good and worthy citizens have been bankrupted after being fucked by their insurer? And how many people avoid proper care out of fear of just such a turn of events?
We don’t have an insurance system, we have an ongoing criminal enterprise. Will a bungling, inept, bureaucratic system be better? How could it help but be?
Posted before I read your reply, as I was looking all of that stuff up.
I’m certainly glad that you disapproved. And as for Geithner and Sumers, they weren’t mentioning taxing benefits - Obama floated that himself through channels in May. They were asked about revenue hikes in general to pay for the deficit, and they couldn’t rule it out.
Further, changing these rules would mean less take-home pay for many people - that’s a pretty clear definition of a tax hike. Especially since Obama had opposed such a notion just a few months ago using just that rhetoric.
So there you go. Obama is walking back his tax promises. And while I am glad to see he intends to pay for all of these things he just bought, he should remember a couple of things - first, that tax policy can break politicians, and second, that this isn’t the late-1980s anymore, when we could let taxes drift upward without major ill effects. Much of the world has embraced supply-side economics to a degree, and would be happy to undercut us in taxes and regulation to poach business from our shores.
I guess I yearn for a day in which politicians do get dogmatically attached to promises they made very clearly in an effort to solicit votes.
Alternatively I yearn for a day in which politicians do not make promises they cannot keep just because they know the public will be gullible enough to believe them.
I have given up yearning for the day when the public stops being gullible.
Read my lips: this would be an even better thing.
And if you don’t understand the economy (and no one does)–don’t make promises about it.
I just wanted to point out that according to this (http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20090706_5915.php), it’s not necessarily clear that people are unwilling to pay higher taxes necessary to support universal healthcare. Seems to depend on how you ask, who you ask, and who asks. It’s fair to say that roughly 50% of the people are willing to pay higher taxes, though.