Writing in salon.com former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich noted:
“According to the Congressional Budget Office, taxing all employee health benefits would yield a whopping $246 billion every year. Even limiting the tax to higher-income employees would go a long way to funding universal healthcare. Employer-provided health insurance is the biggest tax break in the whole federal income tax system...The President will need to tax employer provided health benefits in order to finance universal healthcare… Many in Congress and in the White House are convinced it's the only good option.“
“According to the Congressional Budget Office, taxing all employee health benefits would yield a whopping $246 billion every year. Even limiting the tax to higher-income employees would go a long way to funding universal healthcare. Employer-provided health insurance is the biggest tax break in the whole federal income tax system...The President will need to tax employer provided health benefits in order to finance universal healthcare… Many in Congress and in the White House are convinced it's the only good option.“
The government also believes that given the choice families will gravitate towards the new health care system rather than paying the higher taxes for coverage. “Most middle-class American families rely on their current insurance programs and won't want to give them up even if a new universal system becomes available. Among those are organized labor who rightly considers these benefits among the union movement's proudest achievements,” says Secretary Reich.
So why is the government so intent on providing all of us with health care? Supposedly it is to make sure that the people in our country that can't afford medical treatment are taken care of. The government also wants to control prices within a medical system where prices are skyrocketing.
So why is the government so intent on providing all of us with health care? Supposedly it is to make sure that the people in our country that can't afford medical treatment are taken care of. The government also wants to control prices within a medical system where prices are skyrocketing.
Will universal health care bring better medical treatment to everyone equally? According to economic theory it will not. In a government mandated universal health care system prices are not permitted to ration demands, which brings us back to an earlier economic concept - scarcity - we want more than we have. In a world of scarcity some form of rationing must be inevitable. In the free market system rationing is done by prices. Under current government-mandated health insurance programs around the world rationing is done by waiting, because people are forced to wait for weeks and/or months for whatever level of medical care is offered to them.
Canada is often touted as having a wonderful health care system. They use time to ration treatment (numbers provided by Government Accounting Office - GAO):
Orthopedic 10-25 weeks
Opthamology 8-22 weeks
Internal Medicine 4-6 weeks
Cardiovascular 12-17 weeks
Neurosurgery 10-17 weeks
General Surgery 6-9 weeks
Gynecology 5-9 weeks
We do have a form of univeral health care in this country, the Veteran's Hospitals - run by the government. According to a veteran being interviewed by the GAO about the VA Hospitals, Retired Army Major Elmer Erickson said, "Be prepared to spend the day there. Bring a book and pack a lunch. You eventually will see a doctor."
Is this what we want for our children and grandchildren?
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