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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (15872)	3/31/2010 8:12:11 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Sure. However, have you seen companies like AT&T and Boeing and other recently announce one time tax charges due to the health care bill? I'm sure you have. This is part of the government cost savings that come with the bill. A tax increase is not a cost savings. To the extent that lower taxes on a particular activity, encouraged that activity compared to alternatives, and that activity increases the overall cost, than you can get some effort at cost reduction, but in this case its likely much smaller than the additional tax burden, tiny compared to the overall cost, and probably smaller than the additional costs created by the coverage requirements. Even in terms of "per covered person", you might have a problem, since the regulations increase the cost of covering them, and since the "pre-existing condition" coverage mandate will tend to encourage some people to not get coverage before the condition. The best we can hope for is to keep cost increases down to the level of inflation. That would be a reasonable goal. I don't see how this plan does any such thing. In fact I suspect it pushes things in the other direction.