Syndicate and Hague

I’m going to make this simple. I’ve read a lot of analysis and details and wrote about this before and I am going to distill what I have gleaned from sources as varied as the NY Times, the Economist, the Kaiser Foundation and (gag) the Heritage Foundation about what John McCain proposes to do to your employer-based health care.

• The amount your employer pays into your health care plan will be taxed. This means you will pay a higher income tax (as your income will be higher) and your employer will have to pay additional taxes on your income (as your income will be higher).
• The $5,000 “tax credit” that McCain says offsets this tax will not go to people who continue to have employer-based coverage. The “tax credit” will go only towards privately-purchased (crappy) coverage you buy on the market. From what I have read, it only goes to the insurance company, not to you.
• On average, employers put in over $10,000 a year towards their employees’ family health care plans. So if you’re making $50,000 now, you will be taxed on $60,000.

There you are. Those are your talking points.

If you’re interested in why McCain wants to do this and how it reflects his world views, you can read my other post on Obama vs McCain on health care. I can also sum up below.

McCain wants to privatize health care just like he wants to privatize social security. This is a way to do it. Many younger workers will drop out of the employer-based insurance pools because they either don’t need/don’t think they need the level of coverage that it affords. Instead, they will buy low fee, huge deductible private insurance. As the low risk population leaves the insurance pool, employer-based insurance pools will be increasingly high risk (older/sicker) and premiums will go up. The hope is that premiums will go up to the point where employers drop insurance altogether and everyone is forced onto the free market.

It’s a losing scenario in the long run. It’s a losing scenario in the short run, too.

This post is in absolute danger of becoming a long, long rant about trickle down economics, deregulation, supposed “free market” capitalism, and the decimation of the true middle class. I will throw down some knowledge on that this week, but not today. Today, I want to focus on a small, small portion of the Social Security issue in light of what has happened on Wall Street this month.

It starts as simply as this. McCain wants to privatize Social Security. Obama doesn’t.

I believe, last week, that McCain compared Wall Street to a casino and had all kinds of quasi-regulatory talking points (”Cleaning up Wall Street” is not the same as saying you’re actually going to hold them accountable. It’s all talk.)

If Wall Street is a casino, why does McCain want us to trust the entirety of our retirements to it?

Imagine the absolute freak out that would be happening in this country if the entirety of not only our pensions and 401ks were on the line, but our Social Security as well. Of course, the government bailout essentially puts Social Security on the line, but that’s another topic.

So here’s your choice on your future.

Vote for Obama and you vote for someone who argued against privatization at the National Press Club in 2005 and has voted against Republican amendments to privatize Social Security.

Vote for McCain and you vote for someone who, if he’d had his way, would already have had your retirement in the rollercoaster stock market and free the government from any accountability for its citizens in their old age, despite them working to build the economy of this country for their entire lives.

Do not let McCain rewrite his own history on this. In 2000, part of his presidential agenda that he ran on was to privatize Social Security in “personal accounts” and he voted for Bush’s 2006 Social Security Privatization Plan, which would have moved Social Security’s annual surpluses into a reserve account that would become private accounts (ahem, you know, in the Wall Street Casino). [SCR 83, Vote #68, 3/16/06; SCR 83, Vote #68, 3/16/06]

Seriously, people. We cannot afford for McCain to be president. I don’t care which “culture war” issue may have to hedging to the Republican side, the downfall of our economy is NOT worth it. I’ll address the “culture war” issue - and how those issues are used to distract people - in another post.

This is so dire, folks. I really hope that anyone who is remotely considering voting for McCain or not voting at all hears this one, because if there is anything at all that will kill your budget, here you are.

I’m going to throw a lot of sources at you, because I want you to see that this isn’t some far out rant from the Huffington Post. This is real.

John McCain wants to destroy employer-based health benefits. Is destroy too severe of a term? I don’t think so. Part of McCain’s plan is to tax you for the amount your employer contributes to your health care benefits as if it were income. More on that after this public service moment.

First, you need to see through the carefully constructed terminology he uses on his website:

John McCain Believes The Key To Health Care Reform Is To Restore Control To The Patients Themselves. We want a system of health care in which everyone can afford and acquire the treatment and preventative care they need. Health care should be available to all and not limited by where you work or how much you make. Families should be in charge of their health care dollars and have more control over care…An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people’s needs, lower prices, and portability…While still having the option of employer-based coverage, every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit - effectively cash - of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider.

What this means: this means that you are on your own. Things like “restoring control to the patients” and “families should be in charge of their health care dollars and have more control over care” sound really nice. What they mean is that you are on your own. Have you ever tried to afford insurance on your own or worked for a small business whose coverage was minimal? I have. Cheap health insurance comes with ungodly deductibles before they even begin to cover doctor visits; caps on prescription drug spending; and bureaucratic nightmares if you need something actually covered. Small business’s insurance policies have similar problems.

The problem is, people often don’t notice these things until they get sick. Or in an accident.

The basic concept behind health insurance is one that is anathema to conservatives like Phil Gramm and John McCain - in theory, everyone pays into a system that disproportionately benefits those who need it most. It’s essentially making the burden of risk and the profit of benefit public. I would argue that conservative philosophy is exactly the opposite - they prefer privatizing profit and have no problem lobbying for the public carrying the burden of risk. This is where health care would go under McCain. Private profit, public risk. Keep repeating that. Private profit, public risk.

So back to the employer benefit and taxation issue. Highlighted in today’s Huffington Post is what is rarely spoken. I’ll quote:

McCain intends to tax workers for the value of health insurance that they receive from their employers. Really. It’s not included in the description of his plan on his web site. It is, however, on the site of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that specializes in health policy…It says McCain would “reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers’ taxable income.”

Gerard breaks it down in numbers: “The value of the typical plan provided by an employer to a family is $12,106, of which the employer pays $8,824, and the worker pays the remaining $3,282. The median household income is $44,389, which places most American families in the 15 percent income tax bracket. McCain wants to add the employer’s cost — an additional $8,824 — to that middle class family’s income, then tax it. The hit to the average family is 15 percent of the McCain-added income — $1,323 more in income taxes. And since the McCain tax credits are for privately purchased health care ONLY and do not extend to employer-paid benefits, you are literally losing at least $1,323 per year. I just ran the numbers for myself and - as a single person with no dependents, which means less costly health care - I would be looking at a $1300 increase myself.

Know what I don’t have? $1300. It is ridiculous for workers with benefits to be pressured to buy substandard insurance on the market.

Want to read more? I hope you’re outraged. I hope you know where you have over a thousand dollars to cut from your annual budget. Tell people about this. McCain Health Plan Could Mean Higher Tax (NY Times) The Tax Increase McCain Doesn’t Want to Talk About(Washington Monthly) McCain’s Health Care Proposal Will Increase Costs and Reduce Benefits (AFL-CIO) McCain’s $5,000 Promise (FactCheck.org) McCain’s Health-Care Proposal (Businessweek)

What I wish I could give you is more focused discussion of Obama’s health care proposal. Part of the problem is that the majority of time the news spent discussing any of Obama’s proposals/issues were in contention with Clinton. Since then, the news really couldn’t care less about his policy ideas. I’ll give you some info from his website and then add a couple of highlights. God he has so much more specificity on his site than McCain does. It’s beautiful.

I really encourage you to review Obama’s site that I linked to above. The plan is so detailed that I have a hard time summarizing it. But this is my attempt.

The goal is to have a publicly backed health care system. Key elements include guaranteed eligibility, benefits on par with the plan members of Congress have, affordability, subsidies for individuals in need, and accountability on the part of insurance companies. The National Health Insurance Exchange concept is to also allow individuals who want to purchase a private plan - it will act as a watchdog group and create rules/standards (accountability!) for private insurances. They would be required to issue everyone a policy and charge rates that aren’t dependent on health status. Employers must make a contribution, except for small business who can also receive a tax credit to help reduce their health care costs. Mandatory coverage of children. Ensuring Medicaid and SCHIP. Providing a safety net for the cost of catastrophic illnesses for employers/employees IF such savings are used to reduce the cost of workers’ premiums.

You guys, it just keeps going. Go to the site. He addresses women’s issues, civil rights issues in health care, disability/mental illness, technology research, prescription drug companies AND ON AND ON.

This is the man to vote for. He’s got the ideas, he’s got the plan, he needs the platform.

Not to be crass, but seriously, all y’all libertarians and Republicans can go screw yourselves. Live on an island where you don’t care about the society you live in. Tear each other to pieces in some Lord of the Flies fantasyland where the strong survive and blah blah blah.

This is a note I might otherwise post on my Twitter feed. A 140 character WTF, but this is serious.

First, I’ll tell you why I’m beyond outraged. The Star Tribune wrote today that police and fire calls may start to be billed to the recipients of said services in Duluth.

Let me quote from the article:

Duluth city administrators are considering charging fees to property owners and drivers for police and fire responses.

City spokesman Jeff Papas says the amount of the fees haven’t been set yet.

If the Duluth City Council agrees to charge fees, it would then set an amount. The council could vote July 28.

Papas says the city is looking into whether it can charge different fees for residents and nonresidents. If so, fire and vehicle extraction fees would apply to everyone, but only nonresidents would pay to have accidents investigated.

Papas says the fees could bring in an extra $100,000 per year for the city facing a $4.5 million deficit.

Screed ahead.

If our economy/society is in such shambles that we can’t provide basic rescue and protection services to ourselves based on a shared pool of resources, we have a problem.

And here is the problem we face in general. Since the 1980s, certain members of our society have been reaping the tremendous benefits of deregulation, while society itself is cracking under the weight of economic and structural disrepair that has happened with the abandonment of checks and balances on the free market.

Laissez faire economic policy is a dumb idea. The fairy tale that what is good for “the market” is good for the society is preposterous. The current crisis with foreclosures is a fantastic example. “The market” drove up prices and encouraged greedy and corrupt mortgage brokers to get home buyers/refinancers to sign on with loans they had no perceivable way of paying off.

Why would they do this? Huge, huge commission. The bigger the “sale,” the bigger the haul. Lack of oversight and regulation allowed this to continue on a grand scale. There were home buyers/refinancers who made greedy/bad decisions, but if you read the personal stories that have been reported, some were just outright deceived.

Conned. Conned because a lot of people were making a lot of money.

And what happens to the people who really profited on this? They lose a tiny percentage of their ghastly wealth? That’s hardly punishment for hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and the destruction that wreaks on neighborhoods.

But forget that. We could talk about deregulation of mining, all those cranes that keep crashing down and killing people, the airline industry.

Deregulation=no oversight. No oversight=no one to call you out on fraud.

And now we’re in a situation where a city in this great state, and this is a great state, is considering charging for basic rescue and protection.

Minnesota is not perfect, but we used to value our communities. We knew that in order to have a functional state with a good quality of life, you had to invest in the society. We are responsible for the quality of our communities and neighborhoods.

If there’s no money, raise taxes. Forget this “fee-based” Republican crap. We are a society. We stand together or else we will fall apart. Hardly any of us could afford as a single household to create the kind of life that we have when we combine our resources. It is beyond my personal comprehension that people can ignore this simple fact.

I could scream right now, I’m so frustrated. Our physical infrastructure is disintegrating, and now our rescue/protection infrastructure is something we might have to consider the cost of the charges against the benefits of getting help.

Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. Raise the damned income tax. Taxes are your obligation to the society in which you live.

Know what’s worse than taxes? A society where no one is accountable. Make people pay for rescue/protection services and some will opt out. You’d better hope those people don’t live next door to you if it happens.