Taxation for healthcare

[fedupfisherman]

How much are you willing to see your taxes raised to pay for health care for all?

I'd pay a lot to make sure everyone gets health care and coverage

[evlbstrd]

1. My Medicare deduction is $40 per month.

My health insurance deduction is just over $500 per month. I might even split the difference.

[Lars39]

2. Let's cut our defense budget first.

[Donkeykick]

8. I'll Say!

Remember that plane that lost billions of $$, when it went over to Iraq, and they claimed that they couldn't find it?

That was enough $$ to cover every man woman and child in the USA! :wtf:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. if we pay insurance premiums already

why not pay a tax instead? Very rich pay more?

[Book Lover]

4. Welcome to DU

I am willing to send the amount I pay to the insurance company per month - about $500 for my family - to Medicare if they'll let me and mine in on it now.

[sandnsea]

5. can't keep taxing cigarettes

Oregon is trying to raise cigarette taxes at the same time the feds are. I love how everybody is gung ho for children's health insurance since they aren't the ones paying for it. Maybe we should tax wine or something like that for a change.

You can raise my taxes 5%, but I can't do much more than that. Most programs I've seen call for a 6% tax. I don't know if that includes what we already pay for medicare or not.

[papau]

6. EU runs 10% to 15% - depends on coverage & if part of FIT or just on wages

I'd prefer 10% of FIT

[Selatius]

7. France's Sécurité Sociale levies something like a 20 percent payroll tax to fund it all

Of course, I think the payroll tax is too regressive in nature and acts to slow an economy, but aside from the funding, it covers all medical expenses. Roughly 75 percent of costs are covered, and people are free to purchase supplemental insurance to cover the last 25 percent.

My suggestion is if we're going to pay for a single-payer health care system, it should be done through a progressive tax code, but this requires reform of the tax code to eliminate the special interest pork in the code. Otherwise, you will continue having the wealthiest people finding ways to pay lower income taxes than average middle class people and the working poor.

[pinto]

9. Medicare taxes are a modest 1.45% of wages, paid by employees and employers both.

For Part A...A bargain.

Part B premiums (individual) are $88.50 a month...A bargain.

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Social Security taxes are currently 6.2% of employee wages up to a $90,000 wage cap. No taxes on wages above that income...A grossly too low cap. Social Security solvency could be adequately maintained with even a modest increase in the wage cap on taxation.

[Trillo]

10. Whatever the future taxation figure increase attributed to a new heathcare

payment system, it must be offset by at least an equivalent reduction in the currently-insured individual's total healthcare expenses.

There is enough fat and ineffciency to do that, but only by removing the insurance companies and their skim-some-profit mindset.

[pinto]

11. I saw a post earlier that mentioned the possibility that a buy in option for Medicare, open to all,

may be the choice taken by many already insured individuals. An unintended consequence, I guess, and not the most *up front* way to universal, single-payer healthcare, but an interesting possible consequence.