Medicare bill has new tax-free accounts

AP | 11/23/03 | MARY DALRYMPLE

[what's up]

I've looked into an MSA...however, they're not available in Hawaii.

This is a fantastic idea. This will change the whole landscape of health care in our country.

This is the part of the Medicare bill which conservatives have not paid attention to. This is a winner.

[what's up]

As people begin to pay out of their pockets for medical costs (under $1000) we will see health care costs come down dramatically.

Dubya is reforming health care. He is a great President.

[Torie]

From a personal financial standpoint, I love MSA's (I was very annoyed when my Blue Cross plan restructured and ceased to be MSA compatible), and now HSA's (compatible with almost everything with the required deductible, with about double the available deduction as the MSA, and the deduction is above the line, rather than below on your tax return, so it is not subject to the myriad restrctions that attend schedule A deductions, for thost that itemize. However, the loss of revenue to the feds will be many times the estimate ludicrously small number suggested by Thomas of single digit billions over 10 years, many, many, more times, because HSA's are such great deal. Basically you can fully deduct all your medical costs with this without dealing with the 7.5% gross income threashold on your individual deductions schedule A, or alternatively, if you never spend the money on medical care, because you are the bionic man, it is just another pension plan for you.

Taxes are going to be raised I suspect in Bush's second term. You heard it here first. If somehow, Bush dodges that bullet, they will be raised in the term starting in 2008.

None of this spending and tax cutting jihad pencils out. It is not economcially sustainable.

[Torie]

You do know that localizing welfare and redistribution programs would cause both to rapidly collapse don't you? The poor would tend to go where the benefits are most generous, the rich to where the taxes are lowest (presumably with not generous benefits), and the whole financial edifice would rapidly unravel. Sometimes invoking the mantra of localization shortcuts thinking about the real consequences.

[Jim Robinson]

I don't see anything bad about collapsing the federal welfare and redistribution syetems. I think the founders intended for all of this to be controlled at the state and local levels.

[sarcasm]

Did you notice that there is a "revenue enhancement" in this legislation? Medicare beneficiaries with an income of over $ 80,000 will pay a higher premium.

[NeoCaveman]

You do know that localizing welfare and redistribution programs would cause both to rapidly collapse don't you?

And the problem with that is?

[Torie]

As long one knows where one is going, at least one knows where one is going. The idea that politics in America however will ever dismantle the social safety net is however, while not a new idea perhaps, certainly an idea that few are really serious about actually effecting, or think will ever be effected. Rather the task is to somehow manage it all, so the parasite does not kill the host.

[Jim Robinson]

I'd like to get back to what the founders intended. The federal government was never meant to be all things to all people. It was designed to be very limited in scope and power. The state and local governments tightly controlled by the voters is where all of this stuff should be done. We should be paying an excise tax on goods purchased rather than an income tax. The excise tax would have a natural built-in limit (free market) and people would have a better chance at controlling their finances and their tax contributions. And, I suppose, if the liberals really want some money to go to the feds to be redistributed to the states for welfare, they can always donate as much as they want. For example, Barbara Streisand, The Kennedys, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, et al, could donate millions if not billions to the cause.

[Torie]

You think Mississippi can it alone eh financially? I doubt if Mississippi does.

[NeoCaveman]

Rather the task is to somehow manage it all, so the parasite does not kill the host.

I suppoe there is an amount of poision one could drink without dying, but I'm unwilling to test that theory personally.

[Torie]

The founders certainly had no idea what a modern heterogenious industrial/information age economy with mobile populations and incredibily cheap transportation of goods, ideas, and humans, and very expensive techniques of modern medicine, and very long life spans, and truncated familial networks, and very expensive toys of modern warfare with global reach, would be like. One can't go home again to the Jeffersonion idealized model of the economically self reliant and self sufficient rural yeoman farmer, insulated by vast oceans from the travails of far off lands.

[Torie]

I didn't notice that. All I noticed is the 400 billion scoring, which I think is absurdly low.

[xzins]

We'll never be free again until the income tax is gone

Amen. NRST.

It enslaves through manipulation of the basic necessities and desires of life.

It enslaves through vast power placed in the hands of faulty human beings.

In that I have no choice in the matter, it is an immoral taking in violation of "thou shalt not steal."

[Osage Orange]

You know..I'm just fed up with just "talking about it".

Why don't they/we take a state like HI...and "experiment" on them.

Privatize all the schools...

Or....can the Fed income tax there..and make it "flat".

Or, take the State Public works and make it private.

Oh...I can dream can't I..?

FRegards,

[Torie]

We I think are mixing up tax policy with the issue of whether the federal government needs to be in the business of income redistribution on a national basis, and in setting national policies that have redistributionist consequences, and preclude the lowest common denominator effect emanating from individual states.

It is the same conundrum that is posed with the gay marriage issue. If gay marriage is legal in some states, and not others, and as folks migrate they marriages are reinstituted or dissolved, now would that be a mess or what, both economically and otherwise? Indeed, it would tend to preclude free migration, and direct it in directions that over time would further rend the ties that bind this nation.

[texastoo]

I have a hard time understanding why the Republicans put $1 billion for hospital payments for illegal immigrants into a Medicare Bill. Again, the illegals are getting health care for free this time via Medicare. The illegals are lucky, they get the benefits of Medicare and Medicaid all FREEEEE.

[xzins]

With every purchase that an illegal makes at any store in this country, they would pay tax under the NRST.

As it is, they are off the books in most places they work, and that means there is no taxation. That means a free ride.

[Jim Robinson]

Why do you fear people freely migrating to states where they see more opportunity or better political or economic climates? That's called freedom.

[Torie]

I don't fear migration, in fact I celebrate it, and of course, it can't be stopped anyway. What I am concerned about are state laws so disparate and unmitigated by national law and policy that there are negative externalities to other states, and to the nation as a whole, and to its unity. I guess I am a Federalist. Federalist = Whig = Lincoln Republican = Teddy Roosevelt Republican = Neocon?