Posted on 09/06/2009 11:38:08 AM PDT by Starman417
President Obama will address Congress this week to try and revive the movement for healthcare reform. He's been back and forth on whether or not he supports a single-payer/socialized medicine plan or a plan without a single-payer government option. Until this weekend, I thought that the catch 22 regarding the far left wing of the Democratic Party was whether they could stomach "just" a healthcare reform bill, or if the party would eat its own, attack the moderate Blue Dog Democrats for refusing to back a single-payer plan, and fall on their swords for their socialist medical craving. You see, the American people do not want a single-payer/socialized government option in healthcare reform. The polls show that clearly as do the Town Hall meetings where Democrats from Congress have had more than just an earful from their protesting constituents. So, if Democrats want healthcare reform to pass, they have to drop the single-payer option because moderate Blue Dog Democrats have to listen to their constituents, and if they vote against them, then their voters will remove them from office, and the Democrats will lose control of Congress.
However, the far left wing of the Democratic Party controls the leadership in Congress. They want their socialized medicine. They want it bad. In the House of Representatives, 83 far left Democrats said they will not pass a healthcare reform bill that doesn't have the single-payer/government option of socialized medicine. The House is also where Blue Dog Democrats blocked passage of a healthcare bill in August because their constituents didn't want the single-payer option.
In the Senate, far left Democrats want their socialized medicine bigtime, but they waited too long. When Sen. Ted Kennedy was alive, Democrats had a big enough majority to override a filibuster from Republicans who do not want socialized medicine included in healthcare reform. Now that he's dead, the Democrats won't have enough votes to ram through a bill until his seat is filled with a Senator who will tow the party line against the will of the American people.
But even with all that, the real catch 22 is not whether to have or not to have a single-payer, socialized healthcare, government option. No, the real conundrum is how to pay for it. Democrats promised in 2006 to balance the budget, end pork spending by revealing names of Congressmen who put wasteful programs into bills, and to do pay-as-you-go spending. 3 yrs later, they have not. President Obama promised for 2 years that he could do his entire domestic agenda (TRILLIONS of dollars in new spending) just by cutting waste from the Federal Budget, but he's already spent TRILLIONS while only trimming a few hundred million from the budget (a lot of money to be sure, but literally less than .1% of what is needed).
Democrats tell us that healthcare reform (even with a single-payer, government option) will pay for itself with the reduced costs of such a mammoth program, and by $500million in cuts to the Medicare program which is already underfunded, running out of money, and...they can't/won't say why they haven't made those cuts already. Given all this, and the unprecedented spending that's already been done by the Obama Administration, many people expect healthcare to be paid for by taxes.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net
Okay, tax the twinkies, but give me a total write off on my taxes if I do one or more of the following:
1) Join a gym, or the equivalent, and use it
2) Join Weight-Watchers, or the equivalent, and lose weight. 3) Buy some really great work out equipment
4) build a pool in my yard.
My eyes are blurry. I thought this said tummy tucks and chopadickotomy. (covered under Obama health care.)
Zero can go too Hell!
Not even close:
$100 million is 0.01% of $1 trillion, or oe per cent of one per cent of that amount.
Less than rounding error, in other words.
Negligible.
Why should I pay a tax on twinkies or doughnuts or other "unhealthy" foods if I myself am not unhealthy? I exercise regularly, watch what I eat, just had a physical that showed no problems whatsoever. So I think I can eat a doughnut tomorrow morning without ending up in the ER. So how is a tax on the food "progressive" or right, or fair in any way?
Suppose I buy into the whole idea that if we're all going to be paying (collectively) for our (collective) healthcare, then we have a say in trying to reduce our financial exposure by providing incentives (or dis-incentives) for healthy/unhealthy lifestyles. Does that mean the left would be willing to sign up to tax homosexuals, IV drug users, and promiscuous young adults? After all, all these lifestyle choices are know, demonstrably linked to increased medical problems. If I'm going to have to pay more for a doughnut 'cause it might cost our wonderful collective more in the long run...then I want the gay couple down the street paying a lot more too. Ha. I dare say no-one alive and reading this post will live long enough to see a "liberal" promote the idea of taxing gays and immorally sexually active people. That's not "fair" to them. But taxing the fat white-guy down the street working two jobs to support his family and Church, oh yeah, that's just "spreading the wealth" around.
“I dare say no-one alive and reading this post will live long enough to see a “liberal” promote the idea of taxing gays and immorally sexually active people.”
Which is why this ultimately will sink like a stone. Regular taxpayers will be outraged at the notion of having to subsidize immorality (lifestyles and “medical” services like abortion), while liberals will never accede to a tax structure that actually makes individuals personally responsible for the higher medical costs associated with their lifestyles.
The fact that lifestyle factors that contribute most directly to higher health costs (smoking, obesity, HIV/AIDS) are disproportionately concentrated among the poor simply aggravates the problem of how to solve the financing problem “fairly.”
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