Skip to main content

The first step: the Federal government decides how much health care you are entitled to have

Paying for universal health care was always the (ahem, with apologies to the GOP) the elephant in the room.

Here are the three options thus far on the table, according to the SF Chronicle:

Rep. Pete Stark, a leading congressional author of health reform legislation, called Thursday for a 2 percent income tax surcharge to pay for the health insurance program he predicted Congress and President Obama would enact later this year....

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that also is drafting health reform legislation, has endorsed a new tax on employees for some health insurance benefits that exceed the value of the basic plan offered to federal employees, currently about $13,000 a year for a family of four.

Obama has proposed paying for universal health care coverage by reducing tax deductions for upper-income taxpayers.


The one that catches my eye here--and which has been getting pimped in the press with sufficient regularity over the past few days to suggest it is the front runner--is the Baucus plan for taxing your existing health care benefits.

Notice what Senator Baucus is proposing: the new tax will kick in for employees at the point at which their benefits exceed about $13,000 annually, which is described as the value of the basic plan offered to federal employees.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the basic plan in this context generally means the cheapest plan, the one with the fewest actual benefits, and usually the highest co-pays.

So what Senator Baucus is suggesting is that the baseline for universal health care will be the cost of the worst plan that the Feds offer their own employees, and that everything above that will be essentially considered a taxable luxury.

This also means, to take the example of Delaware state employees, that every employee with a family health plan will come under this tax.

The worst Delaware state employee family options are First State Basic ($14,360.16) AETNA HMO ($15,539.44/year) and BlueCare HMO ($15,401.28). The best plan is the Comprehensive PPO plan ($16,677.60).

I need to say this again: the proposed standard is that you are only entitled to health care worth the worst Federal plan, and anything better will be considered a taxable luxury.

The other irony about the Baucus plan, coming from the Democrats--the party of the progressives--is that this is a profoundly regressive tax. Again, consider Delaware's state employees and realize that Senator Baucus plans to tax a school cafeteria worker with a $20K income and a DE family health plan exactly the same amount as he plans to tax dear old Lonnie George.

And, as has been noted repeatedly throughout the media for the past several days, President Obama is ready to reverse his own campaign promises of no tax increases for families making less than $250K and no taxing of health care benefits in order to accommodate the idea of taxing the poorest people now receiving health insurance to pay for the uninsured.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Also remember, the smaller the group (company) the higher the premiums. Also, the older and sicker the employees (claims experiance) the higher the premiums.

I worked for a small company where the owners (both in their 60's) took themselves out of the company insurance pool because their presence skewed the formula and drove the insurance rates through the roof.
Brad said…
A completely predictable process..in order to guarantee government-subsidized healthcare for everyone, the government taxes the current benefits that people are on. This is really going to hurt small business, which will lead to more unemployment. This is the true cost of socialism..all the indirect effects of these taxes.

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...