The Most Effective Tax Break Obama Could Give, Would be Single-Payer Health Care

[clear eye]

It would help both individuals and businesses enormously. People who don't have to worry about potential medical bankruptcy, would be likely to spend more on other things. Small businesses would be much more likely to succeed, and larger ones would finally be on an equal footing w/ the rest of the industrialized world. These economic benefits are in addition to the obvious humanitarian effect of universal, progressively funded coverage.

So what is Obama saying with his appointment of a noisy, lying opponent of single-payer as Surgeon-General?? That citizens shouldn't even begin to pressure their representatives for such a plan, because the President will say we can't afford it and convince the Dem majority to stonewall? Trillions for crooked bankers, but not one penny more for health care? Rep. Conyers' belief in "Medicare for All", was the reason for his anger at Dr. Sanjay Gupta's appointment.

I can just imagine what the Robert Rubin circle are telling Obama will happen if the U.S. Treasury doesn't fund the big banks ten-fold for the debts they created: that we owe the foreign banks that innocently bought the mortgage derivatives, and if we don't reimburse them they won't play nicely with us, that the problem was not malfeasance and predictable but a surprise caused by the collapse of a market-caused housing bubble that the bankers didn't create or do anything wrong by selling $1000 in insurance-type derivatives for every $1 they loaned, that though it might not play well in Peoria, economic recovery depends on retaining the largest banks under their current management. After all who knows better about money matters, people who pushed themselves to the top of huge banks and then failed them spectacularly, or someone who is managing to keep his/her family going on $40K/yr.?

I don't suppose he is listening to anyone who is telling him what the effects on the sick economy will be of failing to correct the hole that legitimate businesses in the U.S. start with, compared with other industrial countries. Or what failing to restore the general populace's sense of economic predictability will do, currently undermined by the possibility of disastrous medical expenses. Is anyone telling him to weigh which type of major government investment is more likely to give productive businesses a chance?

[exboyfil]

1. I can't agree more

The sack of the treasury continues. The only thing that the dollars going in is doing is to make individuals who made bad decisions whole. The Japanese had a generation of zombie banks after they propped them up, and we are going to have the same situation.

If access to credit was the real problem, then I would have gone for a temporary expansion of something like the FHA for business, home, and consumer debt and made the loans directly (we already do this for companies).

If we continue to try to prop up this asset bubble, we are just going to further raid the Treasury.

As far as Single Payer Health Care, I am all for it based on a percentage of wages. The Germans use 8%/8% (employer/employee). We currently pay 24% of our income for Health Care. If we can get down to 16% with payroll taxes at 16% and eliminate all the various health insurance options out there now under this one system. Except for about $500 in preventative care, my health insurance through my employer (via UHC) costs $12K per year with a $4500 deductible. UHC does not spend more than $500 for the first $16,500. You tell me there are not dollars to be had in such a system?

[demodonkey]

2. K & R! Obama, GET THIS DONE. Healthcare, not warfare, and NOT welfare for insurance companies!

Single-payer healthcare for all. We can't afford NOT to do this.

[tkmorris]

3. Helps people, help business

It's a no-brainer really.