Something to Jump Start Your Day

| December 3, 2019

Health care insurance is a big issue with voters who are Democrats or leaning toward that side of the fence. This article from NPR examines that issue from several angles, but does not go into real details about it, mostly skimming the surface with two types of offers: Medicare For All with no public option, and MFA plus a public option.

From the article:  Polling doesn’t make that clear. On the one hand, Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents in the KFF poll say when it comes to health care, the candidate they trust most is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (who has been pushing a Medicare for All plan since at least 1993).

Yet those same people say they prefer a public option (of the sort supported by former Vice President Joe Biden) to Sanders’ Medicare for All plan.

That voter preference for the public option strategy was borne out in a separate Quinnipiac poll released last week, in which 36% of respondents say Medicare for All is a good idea while 52% say it is a bad idea.

Sanders is all-in on Medicare for All. “I wrote the damn bill,” he keeps reminding reporters. Biden and the rising-in-the-polls Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., are firmly in favor of a more moderate approach.

“We take a version of Medicare. We let you access it if you want to. And if you prefer to stay on your private plan, you can do that, too,” Buttigieg said at the Democrats’ October debate. “That is what most Americans want.” – article

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/03/784238658/which-health-care-strategy-has-the-edge-among-democrats-and-swing-voters

Note that there are no details, just the general no-choice versus choices, which was what Obamacare was supposed to provide. Such things have details but are never released to the public until the damage is done. The hysteria that surrounded Howbadismycare, in addition to Pelosi’s blasé ‘we have to pass it to find out what’s in it’ response when asked about it, was enough to make anyone suspicious.

Real Medicare, the retirement plan you pay for when you’re in the workaday world, is not the same thing that these bozos are proposing. Medicare as we know it was added to your paycheck tax by the Johnson administration in 1964. Furthermore, eliminating public insurance as an option means that those insurance carriers specializing in health insurance will be put out of business, which means those employees will be out of jobs. Ooopsss! Obviously, that doesn’t occur to boneheads like Sanders.

If you haven’t received the 2020 Medicare Plan guide by now, call up your local SocSec office and ask for it. The real problem with the retirement Medicare plan is that when Plan B was enacted and added to it, the fee was and still is deducted from your Social Security check. That means that if you did not have an IRA or any retirement plan through work, and your only retirement resource is SSRI, you’re screwed. And this ain’t the 1960s, when free clinics sprang up to treat hippies and hippie chicks who had gotten themselves into a medical tangle of some kind.

But I have a suggestion: since the SSRI Trust will run out of cash one of these days and the monthly amount is planned to be reduced by up to 23%, or possibly less at 21%, in 2034, then start taxing all income, earned and unearned, for Social Security tax instead of using a cutoff point as is in place now, and include the Medicare tax in it, because you are taxed at your full income for Medicare but not Social Security.

Why do I say this? Because those who are so stinking rich that they can write off nearly all their income at tax time are the people who are not contributing to those funds, and that includes Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and his offspring, Pelosi, and that bimbo from NYC, Alexandria Occasionally-Conscious. Make those twits pay for it, too. Warren is squawking about taxing the rich, just as Sanders has been doing, so drain their pockets and leave the rest of us alone. Oh, did I leave Warren off  my list of whom to tax? Yeah, tax her, too!!

There’s a joke there about Sanders, but not gonna use it right now. And don’t squawk about the article coming from NPR. You have to know what the opposition is thinking(?) and doing if you want to defeat them.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", 2020 Election, Health Care debate, Politics

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5th/77th FA

Spot on Ex, and very timely now that the whole open enrollment/re-up time frame is hard upon us. The scariest lie in the world is the age old saying of, “I’m from the gubmint, I’m here to help.” SS and Medicare/Medicaid are nothing but Ponzi Schemes designed to give more funds to gubmint officials to waste…and as a vote buying platform. There is NO gubmint money, it is all taxpayers money. Having just signed up for my earned benefits, I now realize how screwy the whole system is. Wonder how many boatloads of $ I’d have if all of the SS and Medicare $ I have paid in since 1965 had of been invested in a ROI/IRA/401K program instead of pissed away in an income re-distribution program.

The gubmint can’t keep dope or illegal immigrants out of the country, oblowme care was a boondoggle that only enriched the insurance companies and politicians. I agree wholeheartedly with you MiLady on taxing ALL income. On paper, I made a lot of money as a Line Construction Journeyman. After taxes of 40+% it was not so great. However capping off the amount earned for additional taxes has never made any sense. And what congress critter has ever paid any fair amount of tax like the average citizen. eff them bastards.

I strongly urge the younger members of our little band of miscreants, ne’er do wells, feather merchants, and Warriors to sink as much as you can into either a company matched 401K or a Credit Union IRA. It kind of goes without saying that the gubmint is not going to be a good investment of your money. In my case it is pretty much a known fact that I will not live long enough to get back out of SS what I put into it.

OWB

Nothing to argue with there, except that I would make the case that taxing spending makes more sense to me because it would include taxing the prince who purchases a US made or modified aircraft as well as whatever conveyances the drug lords buy within our borders. Burglars and thieves would probably pay a lot more in taxes were they taxed on stuff they buy rather than on their declared income. As well as would every other inhabitant, however transient, of the country who spends $$ at hotels, entertainment parks, fuel, etc.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

A proper VAT (spending tax) could virtually eliminate or at least significantly reduce the necessity of an income tax altogether if you believe some of the Tax Foundation studies.

It is an intriguing concept because as you say those most affected by a VAT are exactly those we are hoping to charge more the rich who buy significantly more items per year than the rest of us. With respect to items purchased outside of the US make the import tax equal to the US VAT for the same item purchased inside the US and you effectively eliminate the tax dodge for peckerheads like John Kerry and his yacht that he registered outside Massachusetts into Rhode Island to avoid a sales tax.

The people with the means to avoid a tax are often the only ones who do so, consequently things like a VAT are interesting because they propose to make it difficult for anyone to avoid the tax.

rgr769

The problem with VAT is that you get it in addition to income tax, not in lieu of it. They have VAT all over the EU. Most countries also have income tax as well. In the UK, people pay up to half their incomes in income tax plus they pay VAT on everything they purchase. Yeah lets have Medicare for all and we can have Unka Sam confiscate about 60 percent of our income.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

I don’t disagree with what you said and I would not be in favor of a VAT as an additional surplus to government. However with a substantial reduction in income tax it might be a valuable tool to add income to the treasury in a more proportionate fashion.

David

Think 2014 is the breakover year, those retired since will never see all the money they paid in. With the increase in part B, my SS COLA increase comes to about a buck a day. I’m certainly impressed.

Comm Center Rat

“Amazon, the e-commerce giant helmed by the world’s richest man, paid no federal taxes on profit of $11.2 billion last year, according to an analysis of the company’s corporate filings by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a progressive think tank.”

“Thanks to a variety of tax credits and a significant tax break available on pay handed out in the form of company stock, Amazon actually received a federal tax rebate of $129 million last year, giving it an effective federal tax rate of roughly -1 percent.” ~ The Washington Post (2/16/2019)

Maybe Uncle Sam can figure out a way to tax corporations effectively or at least close corporate tax loopholes before coming after us individual taxpayers.

Note: After his divorce, Jeff Bezos is no longer the world’s richest man. His net worth was halved to about $37B.

HMCS(FMF) ret

NSFW:

Anonymous

Half! Give me half, Eddie!

A Proud Infidel®™

JUST WHAT doesn’t Government totally fuck up starting the moment they stick their nose into it?

GDContractor

Amen! And, they have us talking about “insurance” which is nothing of the sort.

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

Anyone hear anything about United Health Care doing away with plan F unless one has it which I do and are grandfathered in. I already got notified of an increase but nothing about the above I just typed in.

Huey Jock

Don’t change anything until all elected officials are on the same program as regular taxpayers.