Poll: Don't Tax Current Healthcare Coverage to Pay for Universal Coverage
Reader Comments
Reality Check:
Soon Medicare will face a moment of truth. The previous positive cash flow has already gone negative. The baby-boomers are about to retire to draw money out of the system instead of paying into it. They will also begin drawing money out of their retirement plans instead of paying into them, reducing the capitalization of our economy. Please read this congressional testimony from a year ago:
“Significant uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, but under any plausible scenario, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path—that is, federal debt will grow much faster than the economy over the long run. In the absence of significant changes in policy, rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to grow rapidly. If federal revenues as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) remain at their current level, that rise in spending will eventually cause future budget deficits to become unsustainable. To prevent deficits from growing to levels that could impose substantial costs on the economy, revenues must rise as a share of GDP, or projected spending must fall—or some combination of the two outcomes must be achieved.
. . .
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that total federal Medicare and Medicaid outlays will rise from 4 percent of GDP in 2007 to 12 percent in 2050 and 19 percent in 2082—which, as a share of the economy, is roughly equivalent to the total amount that the federal government spends today. The bulk of that projected increase in health care spending reflects higher costs per beneficiary rather than an increase in the number of beneficiaries associated with an aging population.”
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/93xx/doc9385/06-17-LTBO_Testimony.pdf
This inescapable reality says we will have to pay more for less benefits. But politicians are promising just the opposite, to people who believe that they should get even more benefits, much sooner, without paying anything. Such demands cannot be met.
Seeing how our government is handling a much smaller crisis in the banking industry, failing to correct course before it collapsed the housing industry, and the automobile industry, I worry that no one in our nations capital is prepared to avoid this massive iceberg that will sink our ship. Instead people continue to demand more benefits to be paid by younger generations, as if Chinese lending is a bottomless well. Do you have grandchildren? Look what you are doing to them.
The 'human condition' is what it is, and politicians have no power to improve upon it. They are merely promising to let us continue living beyond our means, at the expense of those younger than us. The question is whether or not you believe that your grandchildren should become slaves to the government for the rest of their lives through ever increasing taxation, to continue providing you with economic benefits from the government, you believe are owed to you.
taxes on medical benefits
Think congress will tax their own benefits?? If they tax mine and not theirs, revolution may start.
Cut '"defense budget" and have health care
Since WWI, the federal treasury has borrowed to pay people who make stuff used in war. Since then, taxes have paid interest on all that borrowing, Cheney was CEO of one of he companies we're still paying to conduct the war for oil in the Mideast. We're taxed to kill people there and taxed to make and staff hospitals there and treat them. "Defense Contractors" are parasites, eating away at taxes we need to let people have false teeth, organ implants, wheelchairs, home nurse care, oxygen tanks, artificial limbs, stemcell research inventions, heariing aids, surgery of all kinds, voluntary sterilization, abortion, contraceptives, etc. People must be able to limit family size to escape the stress of supporting lots of dependents. Healthcare must replace "Defense" as the national priority.
Nobody expects government health care to be free
I'd rather pay health care premiums to the government then taxes to the insurance companies. No that's not a typo for most people what we pay to the tax farmers we call insurance companies is just that an unregulated ever increasing tax. At least with paying health care premiums to the government we will have some control over who controls the purse strings. We will not have a money hungry buracracy rationing health care to increase exceutive salaries and profits.
My understanding is that the tax farming insurance companies currently have health care expenses at 18% to 19% of GDP and rising. We have no reason to beleive these rapacious profiteer will stop at this percentage. At what point do we say no? Health care in the US is already twice as expensive as any other industrial country and we do worse on many measurse of health care success then most. Certainly, we have more rationing of health care then coutries like Canada.
Let’s put this in context:
Soon Medicare will face a moment of truth. The previous positive cash flow has already gone negative. The baby-boomers are about to retire to draw money out of the system instead of paying into it. They will also begin drawing money out of their retirement plans instead of paying into them, reducing the capitalization of our economy. Please read this congressional testimony from a year ago:
“Significant uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, but under any plausible scenario, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path—that is, federal debt will grow much faster than the economy over the long run. In the absence of significant changes in policy, rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to grow rapidly. If federal revenues as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) remain at their current level, that rise in spending will eventually cause future budget deficits to become unsustainable. To prevent deficits from growing to levels that could impose substantial costs on the economy, revenues must rise as a share of GDP, or projected spending must fall—or some combination of the two outcomes must be achieved.
. . .
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that total federal Medicare and Medicaid outlays will rise from 4 percent of GDP in 2007 to 12 percent in 2050 and 19 percent in 2082—which, as a share of the economy, is roughly equivalent to the total amount that the federal government spends today. The bulk of that projected increase in health care spending reflects higher costs per beneficiary rather than an increase in the number of beneficiaries associated with an aging population.”
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/93xx/doc9385/06-17-LTBO_Testimony.pdf
This inescapable reality says we will have to pay more for less benefits. But politicians are promising just the opposite, to people who believe that they should get even more benefits, much sooner, without paying anything. Such demands cannot be met.
Seeing how our government is handling a much smaller crisis in the banking industry, failing to correct course before it collapsed the housing industry, and the automobile industry, I worry that no one in our nations capital is prepared to avoid this massive iceberg that will sink our ship. Instead people continue to demand more benefits to be paid by younger generations, as if Chinese lending is a bottomless well. Do you have grandchildren? Look what you are doing to them.
The 'human condition' is what it is, and politicians have no power to improve upon it. They are merely promising to let us continue living beyond our means, at the expense of those younger than us. The question is whether or not you believe that your grandchildren should become slaves to the government for the rest of their lives through ever increasing taxation, to continue providing you with economic benefits from the government, you believe are owed to you.
Free healthcare? HA!
Everyone who voted for Obama figured they would get free handouts. Tax and spend leads to entitlements. The voting margins that gave Obama victory are the parasites who live off the taxpaying host.
But Obamacare will not be free. In fact it will me mighty expensive in costs, frustration, lack of care, long waits for things like cataract surgery and replacement sugeries.
