The Bush Health Care Plan: Terminally Ill?
1fastdog.
Posted to Politics on Mon Jan 29, 2007 at 12:49:54 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
One of the proposals that President Bush worked into his State of the Union address last week was a health care initiative that's garnering attention and opposition in equal amounts.
Bush's proposal seeks to eliminate the long-standing tax break for job-based medical insurance, requiring that a worker's taxable income include any money his employer contributes to help pay the premiums. A new tax deduction -- $15,000 a year for families and $7,500 for individuals -- would help people pay the premiums, either through their job or on their own.
Bush has targeted the so-called "gold-plated" health care plans in which people have more coverage than is necessary and tend to use those benefits in a way that drives up costs across the board for everyone. Supposedly, the new plan would shift the burden of health insurance from its current province as an employer-paid-for benefit, directly onto the shoulders of employees with an end result of forcing consumers to be aggressive in price-shopping for coverage, while at the same time reminding consumers not to pursue needless medical procedures that drive up health care costs. Color the skeptics unimpressed that the proposal will help those who need health care coverage the most: the uninsured.
Richard J. Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, agreed. "The tax proposal would have the effect of driving people to the small-group insurance market -- a market that has proved unstable," Mr. Umbdenstock said. "For many people, even with a tax break, coverage would remain unaffordable." Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, said, "The president's proposal would do little to help the uninsured, but would undermine the employer-based system through which 160 million people get coverage."
Some critics are seeing the proposal as a reworking of a Bush administration mainstay: a Health Savings Account.
What Bush seems to be proposing is nothing more than a back door tax cut--surprise--for people who buy inexpensive health insurance and therefore a Health Savings Account empowerment act. (In other words, if you buy a $2000 HSA, you still get a $7500 deduction). There also seems to be a serious scam involved--stiffing public hospitals of the subsidies they receive to treat uninsured patients, on the ridiculous assumption that everybody will simply go out and buy health insurance the moment the proposal tumbles from the President's mouth
Even those presently well-insured may soon be facing some tough choices as they edge towards retirement since leaving a work-related insurance plan to buy private insurance is so expensive that many face the decision of whether or not to continue working strictly for more affordable health care coverage.
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