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Who wants to reform health care?
I remember during some townhall forum where “normal people” (i.e. handpicked by Dan Rather or the like) asked questions to GOP and the Democratic candidate. This may have been in 2004. Bush said that the biggest concern for the average American small business owner was taxes. The questioner said that his biggest concern as a small business owner was health care, and what was government going to do to make it easier. I noted back then that health care is a tax policy issue, and that Bush for all his ham-fistedness had it right. Ramesh Ponnuru highlights this fact in Time.
That’s how we ended up with the health-insurance system we have now, based on employers. You get a tax break if you get your insurance through your job. If you get a raise and use it to buy your own insurance instead, you have to pay taxes on that money. (Ditto if you use your raise to pay doctors directly.) Almost everyone takes the tax break. The market for insurance bought by individuals is, as a result, small and stunted, which is all the more reason to stay in the employer system.
Written by johnnyb
I am a "Ragin Cajun" (who actually went to LSU), living in Houston after earning a PhD in Psychology (Behavioral Neuroscience) from Ohio State. I currently work in Baylor College of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow studying the effects of nicotine on the formation of memories. In my spare time I rant about the state of the world and the sad-sack policies that the government hands down to us. I am a pretty big fan of free markets, but am willing to concede the role of local government in issues like public transportation and sewage. Additionally, I must also concede that government funding for science has brought us space travel and a cure for AIDS, and provided a lot of insight into the brain, the field in which I work. Still, I feel that funding for science should be subject to some cost/benefit analysis which scientists should acknowledge. I do not subscribe to the belief that scientists, even those on the public dole, should be beholden to the democratic party.
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: Health Care, taxes
2 Responses to "Who wants to reform health care?"
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Excellent point, and excellent article.
This is probably the best illustration of the problem I’ve seen.
Let the divorce between the employer and health insurance begin.
Great article, one complaint: the potential effects of some Democrats’ plans, such as Hillary’s, could be far greater than a stretching of the existing structure.