According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration is
floating ideas to allow companies to avoid taxes on their capital gains and dividends. To pay for this, the administration would reportedly
eliminate the credit companies get for helping to pay for their employees' health care.
The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.
This is part of the Bush dream: that the corporate world should need to be even less responsible for their impact on society.
Yes this is evil, yes this is irresponsible. Yes, this is a major raspberry to the working people that voted for Bush.
This is also a splendid opportunity for an opposition party to oppose. It's a perfect time to propose the opposition's own dream: Universal Health Care.
The main reason many people have no coverage in the USA, is we deal with health care as if it's only a market. Our "representatives" have set up a system, designed by corporate lobbyists, so capitalists can make money off of people's frailty. And how do we pay for this? Lord help you if you don't have a job that affiliates you with a company. You're on your own, sucker.
"From my experience, I know that he believes strongly in broadening the [income tax] base, lowering the rates and taking the tax code out of business decisions. That's where he would start; those key fundamental philosophies will lead his decisions," said Mark Weinberger, a former assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, now a vice chairman of Ernst & Young LLP.
As evil as the Bush proposals are, they could get Americans to rethink our system. This is one of those vaunted "teaching moments, an opportunity to convey who must bear responsibility for our health.
This theoretical opposition party must assert where collective responsibility for healthcare should rest -- in our own hands: government, the state, we the people. That's how the rest of the industrialized world does it and it works!
Health is a shared, collective responsibility. This is a moral truth we as Americans haven't yet realized.
It's also a financial truth. It's even less expensive to take it on together, as we've seen as we look to Canada and other places. When we're all responsible for our health, we find preventitive care has huge bang for the buck. Markets prefer to only treat disease, since that's where the big profits lie.
But somebody must say this, must explain the simple beauties of Universal Health. Somebody must be a progressive opposition party. Will the Greens be allowed a seat at the table to do so? Or will the Democrats finally stand up and play this role?