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To: Numbers Guy
Means testing is called for, absolutely!
71 posted on 12/04/2003 9:06:15 PM PST by Pan_Yans Wife ("Your joy is your sorrow unmasked." --- GIBRAN)
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To: Pan_Yans Wife
I support cutting these programs for disabled children because I think we have to trim every program across the board. However, if the federal or state government offers programs for disabled children, there should not be a means test. Here's why: medical costs (defined broadly, to include physical therapy, etc.) are usually subsidized by a government or an insurance company, so that the quoted prices for anything medical are astronomical. This being the case, a family with a handicapped child could run up hundreds thousands of dollars if they were being billed directly for the services. Only the mega-wealthy could absorb costs like these, leaving the merely "rich" without sufficient funds to pay for the programs, yet unable to qualify for government programs. Tough luck, you say? Well, I think you could make a strong libertarian argument that these programs should not exist in the first place, but as long as they do exist, if there is a means test, you'll have the merely rich folks paying for the poor folks via exhorbitant taxes, yet these taxpayers would themselves neither qualify for the programs nor be able to afford private care that would rival what the poor folks would get gratis. (Yes, I know, "rich" folks should have private insurance, but insurance companies are far less generous than the government when it comes to paying for things like a social worker to shadow each autistic child at school every day. Again, I'm not defending such programs in the first place; I'm just saying that if taxpayers are going to offer them to anyone, let's not screw a guy who's "rich" because he makes 100k a year, but has four kids, one of whom is disabled.)
133 posted on 12/05/2003 3:02:46 PM PST by utahagen
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