Your medical premium is now the most regressive tax ever created.

[dkf]

It is a huge burden to the middle class but insignificant to the rich.

If it were a progressive or even a flat tax the rich would pay a lot more than the middle class for their premium. This does not exist. Instead the sickest and oldest Pools pay the highest premiums.

When you have such a random scattershot tax you simply cannot provide any sort of fairness in the cost or the benefit. That is what happens when you task for profit and excessive salaried entities with Allocation of services.

[ixion]

1. Spot on.

k/r :applause:

[wordpix]

2. do what the Canadians do---higher sales tax to cover social safety net

High sales tax on everything except food pays for health care, unemployment insurance, everything.

Of course, the Canadians don't have a military to speak of to constantly drain their treasury, either.

[dkf]

3. A national sales tax is also regressive and paves the way for the flat tax.

Giving the repubs an avenue to raise the flat tax and lower incomes taxes is a recipe for disaster.

[OnlinePoker]

5. Wrong

We pay an employment insurance premium monthly as a withholding from our income. Sales tax in BC is 7% provincial and 5% GST, soon to be harmonized into a single 12% tax. Total health budget in BC ($17.9 Billion) in the last budget was 42% of total. There's no way this will all come from sales tax. I will be paying an extra $3.50 a month for medical (to $60+ monthly). Our top personnal marginal income tax rate is 43.7%. And for this we get a system that sends an 80 year old home for two weeks with broken bones because they don't have parts to fix her or 1 year wait for diagnostics and treatment for colon cancer (both family members).

[polly7]

9. Are you kidding me?

More is being spent on our 'non-military' now than ever before. Being in Afghanistan as part of NATO is causing the deficit to soar.

P.S. Certain provinces have no sales tax, or very little. We do pay more through income tax, but being part of a civilized society involves making sacrifices that ensure preventative care and the healthiest population possible, which of course aides in industry and production.

No military ......... tell that to the hundreds of thousands who died fighting both world wars for years while others were waiting it out.

Oh, I have a cousin in Afghanistan for the second time ....... his family waits daily for word he's been killed or injured. Military guy.

[indepat]

4. Preposterously regressive taxes are what Republicans are all about, the right wing of the Republican

Party, the Democratic Party, and the heinously right wing of the Republican Party, the Republican Party. :-)

[elias7]

6. You have to look further than just the premium

High-income earners — families making more than $250,000 — will pay several thousand dollars more in Medicare payroll taxes starting in 2018. Their unearned income, now exempt from the payroll tax, would also be subject to a 3.8 percent levy.

[Romulox]

7. By law, a certain percentage of everyone's income is now set aside for insurance executive salaries.

Hooray! Healthcare is saved.

[Blue State Blues]

18. +1 NT

[glitch]

8. IF the fine is used solely to fund the community clinics

and not stolen to fund wars then I will be okay paying the fine.

[Unvanguard]

10. That's because it's the purchase of a service. No particular reason to make it redistributive.

At least not beyond ensuring that it is affordable.

[no limit]

11. When you call the police that's a service too. Let's charge people for that on a case by case basis

why distribute that burden to everyone?

That logic makes no sense there, why would it make sense for healthcare?

[Sheepshank]

14. you may think you are joking

But recently Salt Lake County government sent out bills to homes and businesses, in some cases for thousands of dollars for use of police and fire services. Internal studies had shown the peoperty taxes and gov't fees were not covering the full cost of running those departments. It's being done and make the crowd non too happy.

[Unvanguard]

16. I'm not sure it doesn't make sense there.

At least if by "case by case basis" you mean equal payment from all in some general way, rather than payment for each time the police perform a service (which would be absurd). It's just that our tax code also has a strong redistributive role to play, and that masks it.

[dkf]

12. It's not a service anymore it's a tax.

[Sheepshank]

13. I predict

that in my lifetime (and I'm not telling anyone my age), insurance premiums will move away from a bill to be paid, to a payroll deduction/taxed withholding based on percentage of wages.

[TransitJohn]

15. Yeah, it would've made too much sense to put everyone on the country on Medicare.

Somebody had to put those poor insurance shareholders' and executives' immoral profits first, thank goodness we have the United States Congress. :sarcasm:

[Trillo]

17. deductibles and copays are certainly regressive.

It makes sense for the poor to have plans that have no copays and no deductibles, but given how the market seems to work, those will probably become the exchange plans that cost the least (because that's how it has worked in the past).

I think this Health Insurance bill is now a done deal, so I reckon it's time to move on, however, pointing out the effect of progressivity vs. regressivity in any monetary construct is probably a never ending battle. It seems to be one of the fundamentals that keep the masses struggling to fit into a system designed by the wealthy.

[inna]

19. Precisely.

Many lower income people will get subsidies, but that doesn't change the fact that individual mandate is hugely regressive, amounts to a MASSIVE and unprecedented hidden tax on the middle class and further increases inequality - which is already at the all-time highest levels.

What a shame that our elected representatives deny us what the rest of the civilized world has been long taken for granted - universal health care funded by taxation.