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Leaders in House Would Tax
Rich for Health Plan
The proposal, a clear expression of
Democrats’ perceived mandate, calls for a surtax on individuals
earning at least $280,000, but it faces opposition in the
Senate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/health/policy/11health.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
How to pay for
healthcare reform...
... when
even the Dems are corrupted by industry cash!
By Jack E. Lohman
Wealthy wage earners
should be very angry. Instead of congress eliminating the
insurance middleman waste to pay for health care reform, as they
should, they are proposing sending rich guys the bill in the
form of
new payroll taxes.
Aren't these
politicians just great? You guys obviously did not put enough in
the kitty. Rather than eliminating the insurance waste, they'll
just have you pay for it.
Paying for reform
could be very simple, except for the
$46 million of insurance industry
money taken by Congress. Obama's Dems are as lucky as the
Republicans, so it has become a major congressional battle.
Politicians don't do things for free, don'cha know.
The best national
solution is to add healthcare to our infrastructure and provide
Medicare for all, a single-payer system, and that basic
change would result in an annual $400 billion decrease in health
care costs. That would give 100% of our people first class
Cheney-care, or for the same dollars we spend today, we could
expand the services to include dental and eye care. Even federal
employees would love that system.
The 31% of today’s
health care waste is consumed by the insurance bureaucracy,
which includes billing departments at every hospital, clinic and
insurance company, plus the insurer’s high CEO salaries and
bonuses, shareholder profits, actuarial and marketing costs,
broker commissions, and even their lobbying and campaign
contributions that are passed on to the patient.
Isn’t it nice to know that your
politician is getting a piece of every private health care
dollar? That's why politicians always prefer private
over public. One can give campaign
contributions and the other can't.
A Medicare-for-all
system makes sense not just for our citizens,
but even more so for our businesses
who are now spending 15% of wages to pay for health care. They
cannot compete with foreign product so they are outsourcing
their manufacturing jobs to foreign countries, which has helped
the US economy in its crash.
To do this right the
insurance industry will have to give some of its growth back,
and the politicians will be seeing less of their lobbyists and
cash. But the country will be better off because of it.
For new
readers:
-- Campaign cash is at the
heart of every societal problem. Follow the money and you'll
virtually
always find a politician at the end
with his hand out. State and federal politicians are all the
same.
-- Obama made a massive
strategical blunder by trying to pass any legislation without
first getting campaign bribes out of the system. The bankers own
the financial markets and the insurers own health care, and
you've seen where these have ended up.
-- The people don't own
anything, when at least they should own their politician. Had
we public
funding of campaigns we would
have fixed health care years ago and our taxes would be 30% less
than they are today.
-- It usually has less to do
with a politician's core beliefs or those of his
constituents, and more to do with which industry he gets his
money from. And the industries know who can be bought.
-- I am tired of talking about
it but the corruption will not stop. It is the Number One cause
of our economy crash, and it will continue as long as
politicians take private cash for their campaigns.
-- It is not the illegal
corruption that is so bad, and anyway that will likely never
stop. But the legal corruption, campaign contributions, is worse
and must immediately cease. It is pure political bribery. If
they weren't in congress they'd go to jail for accepting bribes
and even extortion.
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