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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (215036)	1/26/2007 3:10:57 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

So you're opposed to cutting out the expensive middleman, the insurance companies, even though that would make coverage theoretically much more affordable?? Look at it this way. Why not cut out all middlemen in commerce? Why in health care more than say in food distribution? When I sell my farm produce to a packing house, who then sells to a broker, who sells to a retail chain who sells to the consumer, the price often changes by a factor of 5-10x. I'd love to get 5-10x more for my crops. To hell with those awful middlemen! Problem is, they provide a service which I don't. I can clearly try to perform those tasks as well, under the assumption that for some reason I can do it all more efficiently than those people do, perhaps because I think their profits dominate the issue. You have yet to provide me with any reason to suspect that health care is unique in this regard. Please do if you can, as I would like to consider it if reasonable. Also, you can't fully solve affordability with the tax code, i.e. tax deductions or even tax credits. Plenty of families don't have high enough income levels for such deductions to make much difference. Very true, although the final statement is only looking at it one way, and not the way things actually are. You should treat all medical insurance as non wages, like the employers half of SS & medicare. This is in fact what most company plans do, the cost of medical insurance, if payed by the company, is fully non-taxable, because it does not show up as any sort of pay on your W2. That is what is grossly unfair IMO, and as Geode notes, Mr Bush could correct that with his pen. It has nothing to do with itemizing deductions on Sch A, vs. taking the standard deduction.

To: Katelew who wrote (215036)	1/26/2007 3:19:00 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 281500

Plenty of families don't have high enough income levels for such deductions to make much difference Sorry, forgot to add in my previous reply that this is why I favor direct assistance via wealth transfer from taxes. First step is to treat the tax consequences of obtaining insurance uniformly, i.e. employer, employee, or self-employed pay, it does not matter tax wise. Next step is to assist those who cannot afford the insurance, and I see no reason why such assistance should be any different from other wealth transfer agreements that society has decided are fine. Geode is correct in that regard, society can decide that a wide range of things are for some reason "rights" and should be available to all, and society generally uses taxation to shift the costs around. I have no problem with that. I just like the methods to be clear and transparent and as efficient as possible.