Counting chickens

As you can tell, if you have read the previous post, I have suffered a serious case of “counting your chickens before they hatch.”

Believe it or not, the Republicans, one more time, found a way to lose. They managed to let Obamacare survive.

It is hard to believe but they managed to demonstrate, again, that they are controlled by the “I’d rather be Right,” wing of the party.

I mean they almost nominated a presidential candidate, take your pick, that Hillary would have beat like a drum. But having paid attention to what the broad middle part of their party wanted, they again decided to lecture it and go against the President that the middle elected.

As Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Actually, I can set this one out. I have single payer health care insurance.  I have Medicare.

Not really. Medicare is not a single payer system. You have a 20% deductible for doctor services, a healthy deductible for hospital services, drugs they may or not be covered by the Part D Drug coverage and then there’s ER charges, oxygen, blood, etc., etc. And then there’s the monthly premium and I probably missed some charges.

OTOH Medicaid for the poor is single payer. The taxpayer pays.

And now the Democrats are bringing back the single payer system concept. But not how to pay for it.

I have long supported a single payer system modeled on Medicare but expanded to 100% payment by the government. And included in that would be dental, hearing  and vision coverage including devices.

Yeah, I know that will be expensive. The question then falls back to how to pay for it.

The Left will come up with some type of income tax increase. Which, of course, assures failure because the people already having employer provided insurance will strongly oppose paying for someone else’s healthcare. They’ll note, quite accurately, that a family of 4 pays no federal tax on income of up to about $50,000 and others have the so-called Earned Income credit.

The Right will oppose it on “principle.” Most of that being that Medicaid, if they can get it, covers the poor already and the rich can pay for their own.

The problem is that all the payees are somewhat right.  People paying shouldn’t be paying again.  And while the obvious benefits of government, common defense, infrastructure, etc., can have their payment justified by a graduated income tax by the saying that the benefits cover everyone, when you start to call for specific benefits covering a specific class then it can’t be justified. And that’s what mean’s testing does. And while welfare can be justified as a “hand up” it falls into disrespect when the “hand up” stretches into generations and such dubious things as giving aid to illegal aliens and legal immigrants/refugees.

So the obvious fair way of paying for healthcare is a federal sales tax.  And I say by a sales tax that is collected at the point of sale so that the citizen can see the tax on a daily basis. It should never be a VAT which is hidden.

Of course the Left will scream fairness. Why should the poor be taxed on a necessity such as food because they pay a higher percentage of their income for food. Well, just exempt certain items. Unprepared food, utilities, used cars over 5 years of age….and I’m sure I missed some.

And since no one will be purchasing healthcare insurance a lot of people will get a raise, including business owners and others who had been purchasing insurance for someone else. They can be made to transfer all previous payments made to the insurance companies to the employees that use to receive the benefits.

So let’s give the Demos a round of applause for thinking about and a hearty chorus of boos for wanting to introduce a plan that will never pass…and both sides nasty hisses for bowing to their special interests and never never never actually doing something that helps everyone.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “