The Popular Way To Pay for Health Care

[waiting for hope]

The Popular Way To Pay for Health Care
by: Chris Bowers
Mon Jul 13, 2009 at 13:24

The emerging Democratic plan to pay for health care reform is through a surtax on Americans making $350,000 a year or more:

Instead, Rangel said Democrats will seek to enact one large tax increase targeting wealthier workers to generate the revenue they need to finance their $1 trillion-plus healthcare reform bill.(...)

There would be different surtax rates, ranging from 1 percent to 3 percent, for workers with annual earnings of $350,000, $500,000 and $1 million, Rangel said. Surtaxes are calculated by adding the relevant percentage to workers' regular yearly tax bill.

Despite the overwhelming, galactic, historic and never before equaled popularity of the "tea party" protests this year, this Democratic plan to pay for health care reform through taxes on the wealthy is an extremely popular public policy route. This is because there really is no constituency for cuts to government spending. A recent poll conducted by Pew showed that spending cuts are a truly fringe position in American politics:

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey. June 18-21, 2009. Adults nationwide.
"If you were making up the budget for the federal government this year, would you increase spending for , decrease spending for , or keep spending the same for this?"

Area  Increase  Keep  Same Decrease  Unsure
Education   67%   23%   6%   4% 
Veterans   63%   29%   2%   6% 
Health Care   61%   24%   10%  6% 
Medicare   53%   37%   6%   4% 
Crime   45%   39%  10%   6% 
Unemployment  44%   36%  15%   6% 
Environment   43%   34%  16%   6% 
Energy   41%   35%  15%   6%  
Military   40%   37%  18%   5% 
Science   39%   40%  14%   7% 
Agriculture   35%   41%  12%   13% 
Anti-terrorism   35%   41%  17%   7%  
Intl Aid   26%   33%  34%   7%  

(my note: apologize for the crappy graph reproduction - please see link for better clarity)

Cutting spending is a fringe position, with less than 20% of the country supporting cuts in all major spending areas. While there are not many policy areas where there is a clear majority for raising spending (health care, education, and veteran's being the exceptions), in virtually every spending area there is at least twice as much support for raising government spending as there is for cutting it. This finding is supported by
a somewhat less recent Harris poll from 2007 (more in the extended entry):

When it comes to cutting government spending, there is little support for cutting any substantial programs. Given a list of twelve federal government programs and asked to pick two which should be cut ("if spending had to be cut") space programs top the list by a wide margin (51%). Significant minorities, all under 30 percent, pick welfare programs (28%), defense spending (28%), farm subsidies (24%), environmental programs (16%), homeland security (12%) and transportation (11%). Hardly anyone would cut Medicaid (4%), education (3%), Social Security (2%) or Medicare (1%).

Bottom line: supermajorities oppose spending cuts in all major areas. While some pundits would mock the American public at this point, arguing that they don't like taxes to pay or these services, there actually are two a couple of tax increases the public favors. According to the same Harris poll, increased consumption taxes on alcohol and tobacco is one such route:

The only two taxes on the list shown to those interviewed which would be acceptable to majorities of adults ("if taxes had to be raised") are taxes on cigarettes and beer and alcohol, with 73 percent and 72 percent of adults respectively saying these so called "taxes" should be increased;

~Snip~


More at Link

Thoughts?

Cross posted in Editorials & Other Articles here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=463355&mesg_id=463355

[truedelphi]

1. Although I am glad to see this discussion of having the wealthiest

People bear the burden in our society, another point to bring up is this one:

Every month, the Federal government spends $ 500 per household on War and war related items.

This si a 33% increase since Nine Eleven. Before Nine Eleven, we spent $ 367 per household.

What are we getting for that extra $ 167 a month per household?

We are getting the lovely endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are getting the gracious Homeland Security Department, which was so flooded with monies that it didn't know what to do with, that for a while it was handing out top of the line Fire engines and other expensive paraphernalia to little tiny towns in America known to vote Republican.

And of Course under Homeland Security we are all learning how to quickly take off our shoes so the airport security inspectors can sniff our feet.

So where was the discussion of funding these big wastes of money?

Nowhere. In fact, the Office of General Accounting did not even include the budgets for either war inside the normal Federal budget!

So why can't we pay for the Health Insurance Reform in the same manner. Simply Do it! Or another alternative - Put the expense of insuring all Americans on the same line of Accounting that GAO uses to pay fo rthe helaht insurance of the Senators and the House members!

Or is the fact that 18,000 people die from lack of insurance each year less important than the fact that 3,300 people died on September 11th 2001?