If you had $140 billion and wanted to help peoplekind, how would you spend it?
I got to thinking... Let’s say instead of using $140 billion taxpayer dollars to mail checks to taxpayers, and give tax breaks to corporations... What say we use that $140 billion to jump-start Universal Healthcare? I have a few ideas to start the discussion with, and if you care to follow below the fold, we can all collaborate and come up with a plan to give to our Democratic Representatives and Senators to propose this month.
Starting immediately, every woman, man, and child with a valid Social Security number, not currently under the Medicare Plan, will receive a Healthcare Card. That Card will now be their "insurance/payment" card and will be used just like the former Medicare Card is used.
Also starting immediately, there will be NO MORE PREMIUMS PAID TO ANY HEALTHCARE INSURANCE COMPANY by ANYONE ... by no individual or employer.
For the employers who were paying healthcare insurance premiums, there could be a couple ways to move forward. One could be that the employer would now pay the employee what the employer had been paying in premiums. And to give the "employer" a break, that payment could be 50% or 60% of what they were paying.
And the employee would get a break because, number one, they would not have to pay into the plan as they were, and number two, there will be no more copayments or out-of-pocket expenses.
For the self-employed or individuals who had been paying insurance premiums, that would cease immediately, and those people would reap the reward of keeping that money to spend for other things, or save.
So this $140 billion gives us a jump-start. Then over the ensuing weeks, quickly, the congress critters can work out how much and who would be paying back into the "Healthcare Pot" at more reasonable and affordable costs.
As far as the existing.... Or preexistent healthcare insurance companies, I really don’t have a plan for that, other than I know that once word got out of the impending Universal Healthcare bill forthcoming, I guess the stocks would probably have to be frozen.
Here are a few ideas, but I know there are smarter people than I who will come up with a good plan: Maybe the profits can be used to buy back stock, although I have no idea if there will be enough. (But we will have more money forthcoming to pay out all stockholders.)
Some of the $140 billion and money to come in can be used to retrain thousands of the workers who will lose their jobs. But many of them can do a lateral move over to the government-run bill paying service and work alongside the Medicare employees.
Anyway, maybe this is just a naive way of thinking, but if you had $140 billion and wanted to help peoplekind, how would you spend it?