Of all of George W. Bush's horrible decisions, this one might actually be the worst of the lot. Given the historic ineptitude of this President that is actually quite a statement.
I am referrring to Bush's proposed "insurance" plan that would actually exacerbate the problem of the growing number of uninsured Americans, reduce future Social Security payments to individuals, and completely gut employer-provided health care.
At first glance, Bush's plan sounded almost reasonable. As a self-employed person, my wife and I must pay more than a $1500 a month for the "goldplated" insurance we receive from BlueCross/BlueShield. So, the concept of a $15,000 tax break naturally piqued my curiousity, but then I learned that it would reduce our Social Security payments because naturally the tax break would reduce my income eligible for Social Security.
The Bush plan gives employers an excuse to no longer provide health care if the government is dangling "incentives" to individuals. One might think that this plan would be attractive to business owners, but the conservative National Chamber of Commerce faulted the plan for a myriad of reasons.
Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical Schooland former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, panned the Bush speech.
"The greatest source of insecurity for many Americans is the soaring cost of health care. Leaving jobs can mean losing health insurance, and even when insurance is offered, many workers turn it down because they can't afford their growing share of the premiums."
That has not stopped the usual Wingbat suspects from claiming that too much insurance is the problem. Indeed the headline for Right Winger Jeff Jacoby in Saturday's Boston Globe opines "Insurance raises healthcare's price."
As usual, a wildy-inaccurate and distorted view from a Wingbat. Jacoby is partially correct that insurance does raise prices in some instance particularly with regard to technology and the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, but his reasoning is flawed at best.
For one thing, Jacoby and the rest of the Right Wing, is under the mistaken belief that we operate in a free market system. That is not correct and such reasoning wouldn't pass muster in an introduction to Economics class. Jacoby romanticizes about the market system as envisioned by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations. Unfortunately, no government has been able to resist sticking its nose in the market and has undermined Smith's market by artificially manupulating competition and the market economy.
Nonetheless, GOP Hackavists have continued to spout b.s. about the successes of the market system and gladly tell us such a system works with regard to limited commodities such as education and health care.
Any idiot can plainly see that competition is a farce in these areas and it always results in higher prices for consumers and greater profits for Big Business. However, much like Iraq, Bush continues to stubbornly push a plan that would end insurance as we know it.
The Bush plan claims that 80 percent of Americans would receive a tax break. That is doubtful, because for the worker earning say $30,000 a year, would in fact receive less money when it comes to collecting Social Security. Because the insurance would be taxed at a rate of $15000 for a family and $7500, individuals would receive less money in retirement. The $30K salary would be reduced to $15000 a year and from that figure a person's Social Security would be calculated from and not the $30K salary they receive.
Angell reasons that it would be far cheaper and more efficient to extend Medicare to cover all Americans.
"We need to change the system completely and get the insurance industry, as well as employers, out of it. Private insurance companies offer little of value, yet skim off 15 to 25 percent of the health care dollar for profits and overhead. It would make much more sense to extend Medicare to everyone. That could be done gradually by dropping the eligibility age a decade at a time, while phasing out the insurance companies. The loss of insurance jobs would probably be more than offset by job gains in other industries no longer saddled with health costs.
Medicare is not perfect, but its problems are readily fixable. It is far more efficient than private insurance, with overhead of less than 4 percent, and since it is administered by a single public agency, controlling costs would be possible. Unlike private insurers, it cannot select whom to cover or deny care to those who need it most."
Surveys have shown that Americans actually want universal health care rather than the hodge-podge of medical plans that currently exists. Moreover, companies like General Motors have been recently making a lot of noise about the fact that health care adds about $1500 to the price of a GM car and is the biggest reason that the automaker is in danger of being surpassed by Toyota as the worlds biggest selling brand of automoble.
Bush and other Republicans remain adament about not raising taxes but the health care plan would actually do so all the while that they claim it wont.
"Administration officials refuse to characterize the plan as a tax increase because it raises no new money for the federal government.Instead, it would add a new tax on employer-provided healthcare plans worth more than $15,000 to subsidize those who buy modestly priced plans out of their pockets, according to Michael A Fletcher of the Washington Post.
Angell called the Bush plan a "gesture" and not a plan at all. In essence, it would penalize the 150 million Americans enrolled in some insurance plan at the expense of the 17 million Americans who self pay for all of their insurance, claims Fletcher.
Bush's plan was ripped even before his State of the Union speech by Congressman Charles Rangel of NY, the new chair of the House committee tasked with writing tax bills.
"It’s a bad policy,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House committee that writes tax legislation, said in an interview Friday night to New York Times reporters Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Robert Pear. “We are trying to bring tax relief to the middle class. The president is trying to increase their tax liability. This proposal is inconsistent with what the majority is seeking in the House and the Senate
.”
The Bush insurance plan was erroneously reported as a tax credit by NBC's Norah O'Donell and is the subject itself of a Media Matters column debunking her reportage.
NYT columnist Paul Krugman pointed out "The uninsured don’t need an “incentive” to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible.
Most people without health insurance have low incomes, and just can’t afford the premiums. And making premiums tax-deductible is almost worthless to workers whose income puts them in a low tax bracket."
Snip. Snip.
Two points Krugman added eviscerate the Bush plan's faulty reasoning.
"Of those uninsured who aren’t low-income, many can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions — everything from diabetes to a long-ago case of jock itch. Again, tax deductions won’t solve their problem.
The only people the Bush plan might move out of the ranks of the uninsured are the people we’re least concerned about — affluent, healthy Americans who choose voluntarily not to be insured. At most, the Bush plan might induce some of those people to buy insurance, while in the process — whaddya know — giving many other high-income individuals yet another tax break."
The scariest thing about the Bush plan is that counts on the fact that many Americans may be focusing on Iraq and not paying attention to the fine details like that the tax credit is actually a tax increase on hard working Americans.
"Just to be clear, we’re not talking about the wealthy; we’re talking about ordinary workers who have managed to negotiate better-than-average health plans" Krugman laments.
"The administration also believes, for some reason, that people should be pushed out of employment-based health insurance — admittedly a deeply flawed system — into the individual insurance market, which is a disaster on all fronts. Insurance companies try to avoid selling policies to people who are likely to use them, so a large fraction of premiums in the individual market goes not to paying medical bills but to bureaucracies dedicated to weeding out “high risk” applicants — and keeping them uninsured."
Medicare is not perfect, but it clearly the best solution to the enormous problem of the uninsured and the lack of affordable health care. The current system where health care prices have increased more than 100 % since Bush took office is unsustainable.
It is pretty ridiculous but insurance executives have actually been proud of the fact that the increases in health care where "only" ten percent this year when in past years the number has hovered around 15 percent.
That fifteen percent increase often means less coverage for the same price as employers often shift to less expensive plans. Wal-Mart touts its health care plan but in actuality it is a very high deductable and is still unaffordable for many of Wal Mart indentured servants.
The annual increases also exacerbate the tension between public and private sector employees. Public employees often have to contribute much smaller amounts for their coverage than their counterparts in the private sector. Indeed, the recent NYC transit strike alienated support for the workers who at the time contributed no money to their health care plan.
Our expensive health care system has forced Americans to use their credit cards to pay for health care. Surveys confirm that most Americans have had to declare bankrupcy because of injuries or illness of family members. Hospitals are now teamming with credit card companies and forcing patients to pre pay for certain procedures.
If our current health care system actually spent the total sum we all pay for said care on the patients, we might have fantastic health care, but so much money is wasted and much is allocated poorly.
Funding for national health care could be easily accomplished if a small increase in Social Security payroll tax for those making more than $250,000. Under the current system, only the first $100K is taxed for Social Security. So Right Wing blowhard Curt Schilling pays S.S. taxes on the first $100K of his $15 million annual salary but nothing on the remaining $14.9 million. Nice soak the poor and middle class tax.
A modest increase on the well-to-do is not a tax increase per se as those making more than $100K actually receive a tax break on S.S. taxes while those hard-working Americans not lucky enough to make $100 grand a year end up subsidizing rich spoiled jerks lke Curt Schilling get another tax break they don't need on the backs of the working class.
Got to hand it to Bush and the wingbats for their Dennis Moore tax break — stealing from the poor to pay to the rich — which tricks ordinary Americans into thinking they might actually get a tax break for their "gold-plated insurance plans. Not!