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The price of universal health care may prove to be higher than you think. Although Congress and the White House want you to believe that overall costs will go down, and that much of the program will be paid for by “the wealthy”, there is no reason to believe that these claims are correct. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary. The costs associated with healthcare reform cannot simply be quantified in terms of money. And the people that will be saddled with these costs are actually the middle class.
Yes, money will play a large factor in universal healthcare coverage. If you receive healthcare that is paid for by your employer, that benefit will likely be taxed after the government gets through with it. That is no small thing. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that employers spent on average more than $9,000 per employee for family coverage. If you are in a 30% tax bracket, that would mean an additional $2,700 you would have to pay in taxes each year. But that’s not the best part. By adding the cost of healthcare to your taxable income, the government will force many people into higher tax brackets. That would mean that you would be paying additional taxes on every penny you earn.
The geniuses in Washington are also saying that they plan to place a surtax on the rich. Depending upon what people earn, this could mean that the very wealthy will have to pay as much as 5% more in taxes each year. But the very wealthy have always known how to protect their money. Every single time that the government has attempted to increase taxes on the wealthy, the overall amount of tax collected has actually dropped.
Some members of Congress have tried to point out that during the Eisenhower administration, the top tax bracket in the country was 91%. But they fail to mention that the economy was in a shambles at that time and that Kennedy was elected on a platform which included tax reductions; which he was successful in pushing through. The net result was that the economy took off after the reductions went through.
Both Congress and Obama claim that the system they will put in place will actually reduce costs. But even the independent Congressional Budget Office disagrees with them; saying that the plans put forth by both the Senate and the House would actually increase overall costs.
If you want to look at what universal healthcare actually costs, just take a look at Canada. In many areas of Canada, the overall income tax is greater than 50%. Maybe that would be ok if universal coverage actually covered everyone universally. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Long lines and wait times are the norm in Canada. That is of course unless you are wealthy. In that case, you are free to go to a private clinic and pay in cash.
Canada’s experiment with universal care has actually created a two tier system of healthcare; one for the wealthy and another for everyone else. It has become so bad that many politicians in Canada are now looking for ways to scrap the system entirely. Like all government run programs, it is a model of inefficiency and runaway costs.
In order to control costs, the Canadian system rations health care. That rationing has caused many serious injuries, including death.
The sad thing is that more than 70% of all Americans are happy with the healthcare they get. And while many studies show that 1 in 6 people living in the US has no health care, the system isn’t as bad as it may look. Among those without healthcare are a large number of younger people who choose not to pay for insurance, illegal aliens who should receive no tax payer benefits at all, and several million people who qualify for some government programs that they just never bothered to enroll in.
Yet even though a majority of people are happy with their healthcare, Congress and President Obama seem determined to force change down everyone’s throat and charge it to your tax bill.
byJim Malmberg
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