do I really have to say it???
Posted on 07/13/2008 4:01:41 PM PDT by FocusNexus
Barack Obama unveiled a $6 billion-a-year plan to provide tax credits for small businesses offering health insurance to employees, adopting an idea proposed by onetime rival Hillary Clinton and targeted at one of the most persistent challenges in achieving universal coverage.
The tax credit offers an incentive for small businesses, which helped sink former President Bill Clinton's 1993 plan, which would have required all businesses to contribute toward health costs. Obama's proposed tax credit is an effort to bring this powerful constituency to the Democratic camp by offering carrots, not sticks, toward health coverage. Sen. Clinton concluded the same and offered a similar credit in the plan she unveiled last year.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain claimed last week that Obama was again trying to force small businesses to provide coverage. The Obama plan does require that businesses provide coverage or pay a fine, but it has always exempted small businesses from the mandate.
The credit would be fully available to small businesses but phase out as the firms become medium sized. Specifics of the phase-out and other terms of the plan will have to be worked out with Treasury and members of Congress, Furman said.
Obama expects to fund his plan with savings he says he'll generate in other areas.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
Elections have consequences, they are not just an exercise in self-indulgence and sending messages.
I want to know how much it’s going to cost me.
That’s the bottom line.
I guess I am dumb. We pay our employees insurance and am a small business. But we never pay business taxes. We make sure there is no income each year as any profits are payed out in salaries. How does this do anything for us or anyone else? Someone explain it to me please. I am sure it must make a difference to some but how?
Democrats can still put forward the real Hillary plan...after all...they vote on Hillary/Obama next month at their Denver convention.
I like the symmetry of this, tax small business out business and then give them a tax credit for health care.
“I want to know how much it’s going to cost me.
That’s the bottom line.”
It will cost you lots of $$$$, AND it may cost you your life, literally.
Check out how socialized medicine is working in the UK and Canada. The only way to “contain cost” is to RATION healthcare.
Obama's call for socialized medicine is a reminder of Truman's Fair Deal and its call for establishing universal health care as part of the Democratic Party's political/policy agenda.
Aren't business already allowed to deduct employee insurance premiums as a cost of doing business ?
I'm semi retired. They will be taking $100 out of my SS for medicare. But I have to buy the supplement. In the mean time, they have thousands of dollars that I sent them via my employment...which would be nice for food money.
YES
You signed up last month to post this crap... I smell ozone..
A crap load of money..
do I really have to say it???
You are exactly right. when u draw social security, you will pay nearly 100.00 a month for medicare, plus if you decide to work after that, you will pay into more medicare it never ends.. ONe pays into while they are younger and working, later after drawing SS, and more again if you decide to remain working
> The ant works hard in the withering heat all
> summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for
> the winter.
> The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and
> laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
> Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls
> a press conference and demands to know why the ant should
> be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold
> and starving.
> CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to
> provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a
> video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table
> filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
>
> How can this be, that in a country of such
> wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
> Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the
> grasshopper, and everybody cries when t hey sing,
> ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’
> Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front
> of the ant’s house where the news stations film the
> group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Jesse then has
> the group kneel down to pray to God for the
> grasshopper’s sake.
> Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an
> interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off
> the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate
> tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
> Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity
> & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of
> the summer.
> The ant is fined for failing to hire a
> proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left
> to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the
> government.
> The story ends as we see the grasshopper
> finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food w hile the
> government house he is in, which just happens to be the
> ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he
> doesn’t maintain it.
> The ant has disappeared in the snow.
> The grasshopper is found dead in a drug
> related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken
> over by a gang of spiders who terrorize thence peaceful
> neighborhood.
> MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008
How true this modern version of “The Ant and the Grasshopper” tale it is, sadly. That’s a view of the US under full Democrat control.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.