Nationalized Health Care The Tax Shuffle (Guest Voice)
Nationalized Health Care: The Tax Shuffle
by Michael Reagan
Last week I wrote about the serious risks which older Americans and those seriously or terminally ill face in the so-called “efficiencies” which President Obama and congressional Democrats say will fund a large part of their health care plans. These “efficiencies” can only refer to reallocating doctors, hospital care, drugs and surgeries away from older and ill Americans where it is “wasted” because we will probably pass away sooner than younger and healthier people.
However, in our prior discussion, I did not address the direct financial problems with the plan. The fact is that these plans, even with the so-called efficiencies, will cost more than $100 billion a year. Then Obama says the plan will save the typical family $2500 a year, meaning about $300 billion. This is to be paid for he says, along with trillions of dollars in corporate bailouts and other new spending, by increasing taxes only on those earning over $250,000 yearly!
Well, about 2 percent of all families, or about 2 million families, earn in excess of $250,000 annually. These folks would be facing a tax increase of roughly $100,000 a year just for the health care portion of the spending increases and savings by “typical” families. Since the income tax on these high earners is already about $100,000 annually, it means their taxes will double to pay just for health care.
This is absurd, of course. So what will really happen? With a little sleight of mouth, the administration has also mentioned that employe- paid health insurance “may” become taxed. I guarantee when a politician says a tax “may be increased,” you can insert “will” for “may.” This is a serious tax increase on every American whose employer pays for health insurance. A big tax increase on the vast majority of middle-class Americans. It is a tax increase that could easily hit $2500 per year.
Well, if that doesn’t sound like a good deal – you’re right! You see, under this calculation, the average family “saves” $2500 a year on their health insurance, and the same family gets hit with $2500 in taxes on their employer-paid health insurance. What has happened here? The old government pea game — cut by a dollar what you pay a private insurer, take it away in taxes and then feed it to the federal government spending machine.
Add into this discussion congressional Democrats’ suggestions that a value added tax and/or luxury tax on incidentals such as sodas, and you have the recipe for significantly increased taxes on all American families — regardless of income.
And now you will increase the number of people getting health insurance without adding a doctor, nurse, hospital, surgery or the supply of any drug. Suddenly the sharp decline in available health care assets we discussed last week hitting those on Medicare is also cutting into the health care services available to the middle class who are not on Medicare, with no net cost savings.
The bottom line is the supply and demand. You cannot increase the demand for health care services by 20% with no added supply of services. It will just drive the cost up at least 20%.
If we want to provide 45 million currently uninsured people with health care comparable to what those of us who are insured receive, you must reduce the quality and quantity of health care services the currently insured receive or dramatically increase the supply of care. Simply adding the burden to the existing system both reduces the quality and quantity of care to the currently insured and increases the cost of care to everyone.
Admittedly it “spreads the wealth around,” but that is not what Americans want and not what is being promised.
Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is chairman and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation (www.reaganlegacyfoundation.org). ©2009 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.
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23 Responses to “Nationalized Health Care The Tax Shuffle (Guest Voice)”
Yeah, let's just scare everyone until they crap their pants and then blame liberals for not supplying Depends. If we give that homeless guy insurance instead of charity care, then everyone else's healthcare will suffer. What a crock!
My daughter was in the beginning stages of a kidney infection [from overworking with a bladder infection to get just enough money to pay for her health premiums, as overworking is her only option to keep up with the premiums and paying off previous deductables, her rent and food], so I took her to the clinic yesterday. She reported that they had all her files on computer from every doctor she'd ever seen. This gives the current MD treating her a full view of her overall health profile instantly instead of wading through paperwork, not getting all the fact due to patient oversight/forgetfulness and a thousand other factors. My guess is that this will reduce costs and improve care. And this all under Obama. Imagine that eh?
There are many other areas of waste being attacked by team-Obama. We can afford universal health care and my daughter's case illustrates why we must afford it. The working classes are being made sick by working too hard in order to keep up with payments for being sick.
How sick is that? She's now off work with sick benefits until she improves, so other co-workers will have to work overtime to fill in for her, become sick themselves maybe and the whole cycle continues. If they get sick too much, their employers will figure out a way to over-scrutinize their work in order to manufacture an excuse to get rid of them and hire a fresh replacement to burn out at a later date with the work-to-pay-premiums-get-sick-from-working-too-hard-and-have-to-go-on-public-assistance cycle. This isn't a foreign scenario. Most regular folks have seen this played out before their eyes a hundred times by the time they reach the age of 40.
The system is broke and broken. Streamlining and universal care will relieve the stress that causes illness in the first place. When people feel supported, they feel healthier. When they feel healthier, biofeedback actually makes them healthier. They also become more productive. A healthier populace uses health facilities less. So with the relief of guaranteed health care, we have a healthier, more productive work force… And voila! Universal health care is affordable….not only that, it may even be profitable! Make that, it WILL be profitable.
Whenever someone begins an argument with, “The *only* way group X can accomplish Y is by doing Z” I get all squishy inside.
Don't rush things, people. [sigh] The health care initiative Obama seeks also requires Congressional action, and Congress already has proven it is, as usual, worthless these days on this as on other issues. The bill that Congress has already written is hundreds of pages and has over 300 amendments. This is nonsense. This needs rethought, not merely revision. There is no need to rush — there is no “crisis,” as the liberal media have predictably begun to screech on cue, along with preparing in at least one network's case for an effective info-mercial for the Obama health care effort in the near future. [rolling eyes at childish liberal idiocy and blatant politics] There is no need to rush, and every need to look and to — for a change, libs — *** THINK *** — before you step forward (not leap, not run). [sigh] This health care effort was started too soon, anyway; as you've been told before, the logical and sound thing to do was to wait until the economy improves and you're in a better position to impose the vast new taxes that will be needed to fund this effort.
Speaking of which, to name one thing: Where are the cost projections and the assured new substantial source of revenue, i.e., the taxes? (Or will the losers take the losers' route and “solve” this simply by insisting that funding be made “mandatory” out of general revenues, and feel smug and assured that the problem has then been “solved” while pretending that all is well and it's up to others to do the real work?)
I don't like Michael Reagan but he brings up some reasonable points. There is already a primary care shortage and how this problem will be solved in the setting of expanding coverage has not been addressed to my knowledge. In fact some of the plans proposed by Obama will make primary care and practicing medicine in general less attractive.
We will also have to make some tough decisions on providing care to the elderly. Medicare can't continue to pay for expensive treatments for people who are near death (I'm talking mainly about aggressive surgeries, dialysis, cardiac angiography, etc). This problem needs to be addressed regardless of whatever health plan Obama comes up with and should have been addressed long ago. This will mean saying no to people and means people with a lot of money will get “better” care, two concepts that are anathema to politicians but eventually they'll have to face.
“Make that, it WILL be profitable.”
That is, to say the least, a bold or audacious as well as outside-to-opposite-of-the-mainstream claim. Are you really that overconfident or idealistic (as opposed to realistic)?
“My response is: 'Boo Hoo'…lol..”
It's a common attitude. Note that there are real problems to address with, for example, Conyers-Kucinich and Medicare for All; their bill authorizes seizure and (forced) conversion of private providers to public, and specifically states that lost profits are not going to be compensated, a deliberate violation of the Constitution as well as low-life theft (that leaves certain people gloating).
“There is already a primary care shortage and how this problem will be solved in the setting of expanding coverage has not been addressed to my knowledge. In fact some of the plans proposed by Obama will make primary care and practicing medicine in general less attractive.”
Some providers are already losing money and Obama threatens to reduce payments to providers as one way to pay for this initiative. Many providers refuse Medicare patients because of this; if they will be required by law to accept the patients, that is a form of slavery. Will this actually improve medicare care?
I'm also wondering why other politically difficult issues (at least difficult to providers), the more serious kinds of issues, aren't being addressed. (Obama's target audience may be not only not concerned with the serious issues, but often unable to grasp them as well.) Take supply, which is one thing listed by Reagan. One supply problem is the dearth of physicians in rural areas, often with few natural amenities and poorer economies — doctors, like other people leaving places like the Great Plains, want to live in other places instead. (Which is their right in a free country, you realize.) One thing the Obama people could do, coupled with another, stronger thing, is to offer medical-field scholarships of all kinds in exchange for working in the underserved areas (rural areas, inner city war zones) for four years, to name a specific, serious time period, after graduation. The Obama people could go on to manipulate residency assignments after med-school graduation to ensure doctors (during their residencies) were available in all parts of the nation. (It would be more sinister for them to set up a quota system or “cap and trade” for medical practices, general and specialties, throughout the nation to control supply and distribution of the various doctors. But even this is possible if people want government direction and [command and] control over medicine, in part to achieve liberal politically attractive goals, if disguised in logistical, effectiveness, or other words of concealment.)
Michael Reagan says:
“If we want to provide 45 million currently uninsured people with health care comparable to what those of us who are insured receive…”
Yes, Mr. Reagan, it may sound unbelievable but some of us who already have good health care and insurance want to “provide 45 million currently uninsured people with health care comparable to what those of us who are insured receive.”
And, yeas, Mr. Reagaon, let's at least explore whether this can be done without reducing “the quality and quantity of health care services the currently insured receive or dramatically increase the supply of care.”
Aren't you supposed to be a compassionate Conservative, or has that gone out of the window, too, along with family values and moral values?
“This will mean saying no to people and means people with a lot of money will get 'better' care”
In theory, the second will require travel outside the USA, because the theory includes the prohibition of any private insurance that duplicates care that is covered or controlled by the federal system. Some form of this is found in the Conyers-Kucinich bill for Medicare for All, as an example. It's the inverse of the game the Obama people and the Congressional Dems are playing with the incrementalist “public option” approach. The inverse is to prohibit a “private option” in the USA once everyone is exposed to public care so dissatisfied people with the means to do it won't start opting out of the system and violated the Sacred or Holy Objective of government entitlement programs including future health care, which is universality (and the underlying forced equity).
“compassionate Conservative”
At least we know what that always is supposed to mean, a “conservative” in favor of vote-buying entitlement programs just like the Dems offer people, as well as in a broader sense a more liberal kind of conservative that (as with the Dems) first and foremost is nice and Makes People Feel Good.
(Presumably that's an alternative definition to “pseudo-Democrat” for “moderate” on this liberal Web site.)
Ok lets look at some figures:
Per http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In 2008, the United States will spend 17 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care. It is projected that the percentage will reach 20 percent by 2017.
So we spend considerably more on our healthcare than these other countries with their national health plans. You spend more, you get more right?
So lets look at health:
How about infant mortality rates. These figures are for number of babies that die out of 1,000 live births. Courtesy of the CDC.
Switzerland 4.2
Germany 4.1
France 3.9
U.S 6.8
lurxst, check the archives, please. Your stats have been rebutted several times here over the past month.
As I recall, US counts infant mortality differently. As I recall, cost of defensive medicine is much the culprit in the US as a result of our love of the tort system when somebody ill dies.
So many replies to a “Michael Reagan” rant is just… too funny.
Mr. Reagan exhibits so many symptoms of insanity (DMS-IV) that I'm surprised that anyone bothers.
Young Ron… where are you?
I will be happy to look at other figures. I just figured the CDC was a pretty neutral and reliable source for health statistics.
lurxst:
Thanks for, with hard facts, laying to rest that far-right talking point that “socialist” European healthcare is such a disaster, so inferior to the US'.
Lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancy rates than the US' at a lower percentage of GDP sound OK to me.
But, I am sure, as you say that some will “nitpick” and some will “come up with individual horror stories of 'health care gone wild'” to buttress their arguments against providing all Americans (the rich and the poor) with adequate, viable low cost health care.
Lurxst, not suggesting there is bad motivation on your part, just more to the fact there are some non-comparables in these global health stats.
The 45 million is also in need of a qualifier, since some of us have elected high-deductible frameworks that register as uninsured since the counters only look at dollar one coverages..
“infant mortality”
The USA is not homogeneous. The distinction has to be made between infant morality in ordinary society and in places like inner-city neighborhoods where it's different for a variety of reasons and is not any kind of moral blot on the USA or US society as a whole.
“45 million is also in need of a qualifier”
Unable to afford insurance versus able to buy it but foregoing it for whatever reasons. (A typical “mascot” for the uninsured in the USA is a perfectly healthy college student, if activists want to claim sob stories.)
“cost of defensive medicine is much the culprit in the US as a result of our love of the tort system “
That is why the Dems are likely certain or nearly certain to keep the health care providers in this country at least nominally private (if the feds fund and control everything, obviously it is in name only but that's all that matters to some people, and also for legal purposes). Keeping them (at least nominally) private keeps the tort system going. Is it really likely that the Dems would end this and thwart one of their strongest special-interest groups? (No.)
“The USA is not homogeneous. The distinction has to be made between infant morality in ordinary society and in places like inner-city neighborhoods where it's different for a variety of reasons and is not any kind of moral blot on the USA or US society as a whole.”
Thanks for pointing out just another reason why our nation needs to provide affordable, accessible health care to all Americans, including “in places like inner-city neighborhoods” where one of the reasons infant mortality is higher is exactly the lack of such affordable health care.
In the United States of America, the wealthiest and most advanced nation in the world, there is absolutely no reason why infant health care “in places like inner-city neighborhoods” should not be as good as in “ordinary society.”
Thanks for pointing out just another reason why our nation needs to provide affordable, accessible health care to all Americans, including “in places like inner-city neighborhoods” where one of the reasons infant mortality is higher is exactly the lack of such affordable health care.
Every state as far as I know already provides for prenatal care. The problem isn't access to health care, it's getting the pregnant women to come in. Many of them are too busy with alcohol or crack. The infant mortality problem is not a medical one, it's societal.
“The problem isn't access to health care, it's getting the pregnant women to come in. Many of them are too busy with alcohol or crack. The infant mortality problem is not a medical one, it's societal.”
Thanks for the feedback, DG, but…
Let's assume that you are correct in saying that some women in inner-city neighborhoods are “too busy with alcohol or crack'” to “come in” to get prenatal health care.
I just can not believe that this, what you call a “societal issue,” would result in almost twice an infant mortality rate in these United States as, say, in France.
Just do the math, according to your theory, out of every 6,800 babies who die at birth in the U.S.,compared to 3,900 who die at birth in France, almost 3,000 of those deaths are caused by mothers who “are too busy with alcohol and crack”?
Furthermore, don't you think that France and other European countries have their alcohol and crack problems, and other “societal” issues,too?
Are we that much worse off “societally” than France, or Germany, or Switzerland?
Yes I think we are, at least as it pertains to drug use, which is a prime contributor for neonatal mortality.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10…
As others have also said, the US is more meticulous in tracking neonatal mortality than less developed countries, which skews the numbers.
Don't take my word for it though, just go talk to some obstretricians and ask them why infant mortality is higher here. It's not because of a lack of funding.
Thanks for the link, DG.
Tragic that the US has such high rates of alcohol and drug abuse.
It also may be true that “the US is more meticulous in tracking neonatal mortality than less developed countries, which skews the numbers.”
But, I hope you don't include France, Germany and Switzerland under “less developed countries?” It is those countries' infant mortality rate and other statistics we were discussing.
Finally, I still maintain that is highly unlikely that out of every 6,800 babies who die at birth in the U.S.,compared to 3,900 who die at birth in France, almost 3,000 of those deaths are caused by mothers who “are too busy with alcohol and crack.”
And, most important, I also maintain that our nation needs to provide affordable, accessible health care to all Americans.
Anyway, it has been a good discussion, and I learned something about drug and alcohol abuse in the US, albeit I do not think it is only prevalent in “inner city neighborhoods”