Posted on 01/29/2002 1:10:56 PM PST by GeneD
Filed at 4:59 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will ask Congress for new tax credits to help people buy health insurance and more than $3 billion to expand government-run insurance programs, boosting ideas supported by both liberals and conservatives.
The president also plans to ask for more money for community health centers, who care for many uninsured patients and have long been promoted by Bush as an important part of the nation's health-care solution.
With 44 million Americans lacking insurance, the issue is before Congress constantly. Still, lawmakers failed to act last year, and debate over how much the unemployed need to help pay for health insurance has kept a stimulus package stuck on Capitol Hill.
The Bush plan will be detailed in the budget he submits to Congress next week. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is expected to preview it Wednesday.
The first piece of his proposal would recycle $3.2 billion allocated to the Children's Health Insurance Program but not spent by states. The money is scheduled to return to the federal treasury, but Bush is asking Congress to make it available to states that want to expand their CHIP plans and Medicaid to more low-income children or to their parents.
This is the approach to helping the uninsured that Democrats generally prefer. These state-run programs offer families health insurance directly, meaning parents don't have to shop around for coverage and are guaranteed a basic package of benefits.
Conservatives typically prefer a free-market approach, which would have families choose their own health insurance packages in the open market. Bush's plan, first made when he was running for president and included in his budget last year, will offer tax breaks to help pay often-steep premiums.
This year's proposal will be essentially unchanged and worth up to $1,000 per person or $2,000 per couple, according to an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity. Like last year, it will be available to people who don't owe federal taxes -- typically people with very low incomes.
Last year's proposal, which was phased in over a number of years, set the income limit at $30,000 in adjusted gross income for individual tax filers and $60,000 for married couples.
The plan's cost was estimated at $71.5 billion over 10 years.
The president also will propose an increase of $114 million for community health centers, bringing the total to $1.5 billion, an 8 percent increase over this year's appropriation.
Additionally, the budget plan will propose $350 million to continue Medicaid coverage for families that have recently left welfare. Without this extension, most parents would lose health coverage when they left the rolls. Eligibility for some help would continue for many children, but the new coverage might cost these families more than Medicaid did.
``Making Medicaid available during the welfare-to-work period encourages people to become employed by ensuring that their efforts to find jobs won't result in lost health coverage,'' Thompson said last week in announcing this proposal. ``We're continuing to make sure that work pays for our families.''
I have been leaning in the same direction.
I mean, a person can only take being shot in the foot so many times.
Taxable income at $60k. I can cancel my insurance and be uninsured. Then the gummint will give me $2k to buy insurance.
Is that it?
I read the post three times.
Dubya was chosen by God to lead us, Would you rather have algor, It's all a master plan to foil the democrats-you will see, He's so clever there is no way this can be taken at face value, Bush Basher!, I am gratefull to have a man like Dubya in the white house and you're just jealous, are you a stealth democrat?, We are in a WAR so stop ctiticizing the President.. and on, and on, and on..
We seem to have a Bush endorced stealth campaign to allow them to remain here: LINK
And their numbers roughly equal the number of Americans unemployed and undoubtedly will require government assistance to pay their way.
If the illegals weren't here, there would be jobs that employers would have to compete to fill at market wages.. Retaining employees may require benefits as an incentive, as opposed to handouts from the government it would be a tool employers use to get and keep help.
Of course not.. and the easiest way to get health coverage is through your employer.
Employers don't I suspect offer coverage because they necessarily want to. It's a tool for locating and retaining employees.
Now, if you can hire illegals.. pay them half the wages with none of the benefits, what happens to the people they displace?
I bet they become prime candidates for programs like this one, which employers provide for free otherwise.
You mean all those federal social programs instituted since the early 60's aren't working? The transfer of $8 trillion dollars of wealth from the givers (taxpayers) to the takers (those who can work if they really wanted to) hasn't worked? Gee imagine that.
There are already enough federal programs to shelter the lives of those truly in need. Enough is enough.
And when employers complain: "The market should determine Minimum Wage" I completely agree. No Problem.
But then, when you ask them: "So the market should also determine how much you have to pay to retain help.. right?"
Their answer is to load the pool of potential employees with illegals, stifle competition and drive wages down.
So, on the one hand they want me to compete for my wage.. Fine.
But they don't want to have to compete for my labor, cause that's wrong somehow.
Capitalism is good. But allowing anything and everything in the name of capitalism is bad. Issues have to be judged on their merits. I believe in a free enterprize system within markets. But when you open those same tools to international markets, you can destroy the free nation in the quest for the mystical pot-o-gold at the end of the capitalist rainbow. To allow our workers to have compete with a nation paying it's employees cents per hour, is just plain lunacy as far as I am concerned. It's destructive and destabalizing.
We are getting Hillary health care step by step.
I'm afraid that the tax rebate (pittance) we got has thrown Conservatives off balance so that they don't notice this spending. He talks tax cuts and spends like a liberal.
Every day it is billions - and the debts have to be repaid by us and our children. Companies and countries are going bankrupt. Do we think we are immuned?
I didn't think I was voting for this. I am so disappointed.
I think there's way too much hysteria on this thread. Look at the facts.
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