Experts Pan Bush Health Plan

The administration estimates that in 2009, 80 percent of policies will fall under the $15,000 deduction.

After 10 years, though, only about 60 percent will, so more people would be hit by the tax, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. The administration's own figures show the government losing as much as $40 billion in tax revenue in the first year but breaking even over a decade as more revenue rolls in.

Wealthier families who benefit from the deduction would get a much greater value than less-affluent families. The $15,000 deduction would be worth $5,250 to a family taxed at 35 percent but only $1,500 to one taxed in the 10 percent bracket. Moreover, more than half of the uninsured are too poor to owe any taxes and would see no benefit, according to an analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation. A more effective strategy, some said, would be to offer the poor tax credits to pay for health insurance, a strategy that Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said yesterday the administration has considered.

Others fear the plan would prompt more employers to drop health coverage and offer employees an immediate increase in wages to buy coverage on the individual market. But those plans tend to be more expensive, less comprehensive and harder to get for consumers who are already sick.

"We're tilting the playing field toward this very flawed market," said Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute.

...he offers several plans to provide more billions of federal dollars to the private insurers who have driven the cost of the health care system up 73 percent since 2000.

guess he means the private insurance companies that use up 31 percent of every health care dollar for their own CEOs’ salaries, payments to lobbyists, media campaigns and the multiple bureaucratic costs of thousands of insurance companies rather than a single payer such as Medicare. Those same private insurance companies provide no health care to anyone in this country. (Well, maybe they provide health care for their own employees, who number in the tens of thousands.)

He must mean those same private insurance companies whose highest-paid CEO (at United Health) gets $122.7 million dollars a year—enough to cover the health care costs of roughly 34,000 American citizens.

The president also gave a big plug for the idea of so-called federal/state partnerships. He said he will be urging the provision of federal funds to the states so that the poor and the sick can be covered to purchase insurance—with an “affordable choice.” More money for these same insurance companies! In every one of these instances, the president is talking about reckless additional spending for health care “insurance”—not a net savings such as that which we would get from a single-payer system. That’s why his highly applauded promise to balance the budget rings false—and cold-hearted.

Of course, he wants expanded money to help develop health savings accounts that help the very rich. It’s yet another tax break for them, since they can earn interest on all the money they save and continue to have their health care benefits provided from their employers—or they may even be the employers. Small business health pools, supplemented by government, for small businesses is another recycled idea. Both of these plans would provide yet more of our federal dollars to the insurance companies.

...

Let’s hope the Democratic Congress gets the message. The voters did indeed vote for a national response to the health care crisis.

tags: health care  insurance  health insurance  bush  bushs health care plan  

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