Health Care Reform’s Hidden Tax Gem

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Health Care Reform’s Hidden Tax Gem
March 27, 2010

The health care reform legislation President Obama signed into law last week takes a little-noticed but precedent-setting swipe at executive pay excess.

By Sam Pizzigati


The health care reform package that President Obama signed into law last week will give many millions of Americans better access to health care. We can say that with certainty. Here’s what we cannot say with certainty: The wider access that health care reform now ensures will make America a much healthier nation.

Why can’t we say this? Here’s why: Access to health care does not make people healthy. American middle-income people who already have health care, research has shown, have far worse health, as measured by a variety of yardsticks, than comparable middle-income people in Japan and many other nations.

If health care doesn’t automatically translate into healthier societies, the obvious question becomes, then what does? Equality. People who live in more equal societies, epidemiologists have documented, live longer and healthier lives than people who live in more unequal societies.

But here’s the encouraging news: The just-passed health care reform package includes provisions that will help make the United States more equal. Some of these provisions are starting to receive considerable press attention. The health care reform package overall, New York Times analyst David Leonhardt noted last week, just may represent “the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.” ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/health-care-reforms-hidden-tax-gem/

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I can only hope that the media give this as much time as they did the

f**kin teabaggers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[goclark]

2. Keep Hope Alive ~

What I am seeing on tv is a tricky slide to the Right ~

Won't show the entire crowd atPalin's Love In ~ " "Thousands" of people were there.

Keep saying over and over again that most of the people don't even like the healthcare bill etc., etc,

[eridani]

3. Forgot to mention that access to substandard insurance is not access to health care n/t

[patrice]

4. Than you, thank you, thank you, thank you . . . ! And DU -ly shared!!!!

:loveya: marmar :loveya:

[marmar]

5. Awwww.....

:loveya: Right back, Patrice. :loveya:

[yurbud]

6. time to apply a similar fix to Social Security: Remove the cap and LOWER the rate

that would be popular with all the top one-tenth of one percent.

[Zoeisright]

7. So then why do 45,000 Americans die because they don't get health care?

I know that having health care doesn't make you healthy, but it sure can prevent premature death.