Technically he has already left the Democratic Party, I know that. But, he still caucuses with the democrats and they give him seats on influential committees to try and keep him somewhat aligned with the democratic voting bloc. Maybe they should get around to the prospect of dumping him from some of those nice committee seats. It might even be a good idea to run a serious candidate against him and call him to task for all the times that he has sided with the Republican Party on key issues.
It is amazing to me that he has somehow become the stumbling block on the health care debate. He was against the public option. Now he is against expanding Medicare to help cover people. I would be fairly certain that the only health care reform package he would support probbaly looks alot like the package Mc Cain was pushing. That was less about actual reform and more of a gimmick to keep the same broken system but with tax incentives and government vouchers to make insurance more affordable. (I don't remember how was he planning to pay for the vouchers again.)
That is another thing. The U.S. Senate needs to be kicked in the ass for coming up with this tax idea to pay for their reform bill. Taxing health insurance benifits on the common worker is a terrible idea. Here are two examples of why......
1. I work for an auto parts company. My health insurance is employer paid, I do not pay one cent for my coverage not even as a pre-tax deduction on each pay check. My insurance is negotiated between the company, the U.A.W., and the insurance company. I have really good insurance that pays 80% after I have paid an annual deductible of 200$ and pays 100% after I have paid a total of 1000$. However in a way I do pay for this good coverage. I pay for it in the form of lower wages, I only make a little more then 2 dollars an hour over minimum wage. If you taxed me on the value of my health insurance the taxes alone could make my excellent coverage cost me too much given my rate of pay.
2. My dad works for a machining company that makes power couplings and other devices for heavy duty machinery. He pays out of pocket for his health insurance, his plant is non-union. He is already paying something like 800$ a month for insurance, which isn't as good as mine. If you taxed him on that he would basically be paying an addtional cost for insurance he already has to pay for.
The millionaires tax that was in the House of Reps. bill made more sense as a way to pay for health care. I see nothing wrong with making those people, that benefit the most from having a cheap and un-insured workforce, pay for it.
Actually the best thing to do would be to open Medicare to everyone in the country, expand what is covered to include everything that is not elective surgery (This would include covering abortions in the cases of rape, incest, and if the life of the woman is endanger. In any other case they would still have the right but have to pay out of pocket.)
The way to pay for it is to expand the Medicare tax. On my last pay check it said that almost 9$ was withheld for Medicare tax. If Medicare was morphed in to a universal health care plan I would have no problem with paying for it with a higher Medicare tax. In my particular case this would likely translate in to a higher pay rate, since the company is no longer paying huge sums for health insurance. In my dads case this would most likely result in him paying less for his health insurance since an increased Medicare tax is not likely to cost him more then the 800$ something he currently pays each month.
Finally I just want to point out that the base problem with all of these arrugments is that we are still looking at health care through the eyes of capitalism. Capitalism is a cold calculating system obsessed with making profits and its culture has a firm grip on an industry that is supposed to keep us healthy and make us healthy again when we are sick. There should be moral outrage at the idea of one person turning a profit from another persons misery. But I understand that universal, not for profit, health care is a long way off and that is why for now I think the public option and a millionaires tax is the best solution.
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