INQUIRY FROM NEWSLANC TO A HEALTH CARE ACTIVIST: Can President Obama hold down the cost of universal coverage outside a single payer system?
RESPONSE: He cannot do it.
It is amazing to watch them go through all the effort they are to find a way to pay for a non-solution to the health care crisis. And, the methods they are considering are going to hurt the already weak economy. They are proposing a tax of 8% on payroll on businesses that do not insure their employees — and not big businesses, $400,000 and up. That will insure a jobless recovery. And a 2.5% tax on people who do not buy insurance, yet if you make $88,000 per year you will pay 19% of your income on insurance — if insurance prices don’t go up.
And, they are cutting health care for the poor and elderly (Medicare and Medicaid) — two programs already struggling calling it “efficiency savings” and then there is a tax on the super rich — the only tax mentioned that makes any sense — but the senate says that is dead.
The public option does not go into effect until 2013! (Hmm, just after an election year — interesting coincidence. Gives the insurance companies time to kill it.) And, while Obama is right when he says — if you like your insurance you can keep it — he does not mention that if you do not like your insurance there are roadblocks to changing it.
The bill is a disaster. It will leave millions without insurance even if successful! Defeating it would be the best thing. They need to start over and do the obvious.
It is a mess but Obama and the Dems are not taking on the insurance industry, they are threatening the economy and not solving the health care crisis in order to give them a trillion a year in new revenue. It is a major rip-off of the tax payers, consumers and businesses.
The Single Payer movement is growing rapidly and has lots going on. We’re pushing, but this bill has to die first or pass and fail before we get the traction we need. My sense is single payer is inevitable, the question is when. It is the only way to provide health care for all.
How exactly are you going to get single-payer through Congress when it’s questionable whether Obama will even be able to do so with his plan? Your article does not address this.