[QUOTE=DSeid]
About 40% of Americans are currently uninsured. They work but their jobs do not provide health insurance.
[/QUOTE]
In the interests of accuracy, the situation is bad, but not that bad. It’s about 45 million people or around 15%.
[QUOTE=Steve MB]
If we’re doing this in baby steps, does that mean I should give estimated increases in insurance costs for each year until a bare-bones middle-class plan exceeds the threshold, instead of just jumping ahead to the point in the early 2010s where that happens?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know why you keep bringing up this strawman. #1, this is designed to help keep costs from rising. I don’t think it’ll do that, but it certainly won’t hurt. #2, You’re making the assumption that the allowed deduction won’t rise as costs do. That’s far from a safe assumption, for example, when I started itemizing my taxes, I could write off 4.5 cents for every mile I drove for business. That number is more like 8 or 9 cents now. Arguing against something now for reasons that may or may not exist at some point in the future doesn’t strike me as very useful at all.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
I could write off 4.5 cents for every mile I drove for business. That number is more like 8 or 9 cents now.
[/QUOTE]
The rest of us are taking a 44.5 cent per mile deduction for 2006.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
The rest of us are taking a 44.5 cent per mile deduction for 2006.
[/QUOTE]
Wow. Obviously, I haven’t done my taxes yet, and totally misremembered from last year. I do remember it being 4.5 cents when I started though.
[QUOTE=threemae]
In the interests of accuracy, the situation is bad, but not that bad. It’s about 45 million people or around 15%.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry about that. My neurons did a little misfire, remembering the figure that those with employer-provided insurance has decreased to under 60% and just jumping to the 40% uninsured. Agaiin apologies and thanks for the gentle correction. Accurate numbers can be found here.
Just under 60% of Americans have employer-provided coverage (a decreasing percentage), about 15.9% are uninsured, 13% are covered by Medicaid/SCHIP, 13.7% by Medicare, 3.8% by militiary plans, 9.1% by individually purchased plans. (Yes, it adds up to more than 100%, some have more than one coverage.)
Biggirl please realize that the “percentage of Americans who are uninsured rose largely because the percentage of people with employer-sponsored coverage continued to decline, as it has in the past several years.” Your cafeteria cleaning woman is now more likely to not have health insurance at all. That’s the result of our nation’s subsidization of employer purchased healthcare insurance.
No doubt, Bush’s proposal is way too wimpy to actually accomplish very much and is DOA anyway. But the idea that this bizzare regressive subsidy of insurance purchases created by the tax treatment of employer sponsored plans needs to be on the table is a good one, even if his particulars are, wotta surprise, fatally flawed.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
You’re making the assumption that the allowed deduction won’t rise as costs do.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not the one making that assumption. The architects of the plan are the ones making that assumption, as I cited on the other thread:
[QUOTE=Steve MB]
I’m not the one making that assumption. The architects of the plan are the ones making that assumption, as I cited on the other thread:
[/QUOTE]
I read the article. It doesn’t say what you claim it’s saying. In fact, pretty much all it does say is what you’ve quoted…which unfortunately doesn’t make the point you seem to be trying to make. Care to try again? Or at least elaborate on what you mean?
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
I read the article. It doesn’t say what you claim it’s saying.
[/QUOTE]
It quite clearly states that the plan designers expect it to “turn revenue positive around 2013”. Unless you can provide some explanation for how a government program can become “revenue positive” other than by increasing the amount of money paid by the taxpayers, I think that settles the matter.