We need universal coverage yesterday

Millions of people in this nation are in the same boat. The boat that is sinking faster than you can bail. If our members of congress would pass HR 676, everyone in this nation would have protection. Check it out. No copays, no deductables, just health care. Ouality affordable, anytime,anywhere healthcare.
http://www.ufhc.org

you won't believe any of this, but here's where tax dollars REALLY come from.....

http://www.plusaf.com/soapbox/flattax.htm

................... yep, told you you would't believe it....
:)

But Plusaf, income tax is only a small part of the taxes most Americans pay, and is the only progressive tax we have. All the others are (extremely) regressive (meaning the poor & middle class pay the most by FAR, percentage-of-income-wise). The income tax is the only one that tries to bring back some balance to the equation, and you want us to lose what little balance we have? I would prefer no taxation other than a progressive income tax, with ALL income being treated the same (not just tax "earned" far higher than "unearned" income as we do now). I would let everyone keep their first $10-20,000 tax free (in this economy). Why? Because that money would stimulate the economy from the bottom, up, which is the way capital flows most consistently and reliably. Every person who gets to come in contact with those dollars as they make their way back up the economic ladder ADDS VALUE to them. The more American hands they filter through, the better for us all. Plus remember all wages earned over around $90,000 get an automatic 12.4% SSI tax break. The progressive income tax tries to adjust somewhat for that imbalance too. Back to the books for you, young man! You were right about one thing; your theory is unbelievable. (I thought this was supposed to be about health care? I support HR 676 not only because it would be good for Americans, but because it would be good for America.)

thanks, spoon... and as i said, you wouldn't believe anything on my webpage... and it sounds like you didn't READ any of it, either...... i favor a flat tax on ALL income ABOVE about $30-40,000. pick a number; it's arbitrary.... adjust it later...... i just used the $20,000 number as a starting point...... i'll change it now to $30k... thanks..................... no exclusions, no hidden income, no deductions for anything...... rent, mortgages, capital gains, church donations.... nothing........ and NO SSI breaks or anything else you want to add to the mix.......................... do that, and the feds would gather more money at 9% on everything above the floor level than they do now, and the US population would save BILLIONS in money consumed just playing the tax-man and accounting games!!!!!!! ........................ so next time, give it the least try before telling me i'm wrong, especially because my numbers are more generous than yours!
............................................... now back to HR 676 and health care................ the idea of '676 is to increase taxes on "the wealthy" to pay for the health care benefits for folks less able to pay.......... with a flat tax, everyone would have more money in their pockets to pay for health care, including the ones you want to cover by soaking the rich....... stop targeting the rich and take the burden off the middle class by actually leaving MORE money in their pockets to start with!!!!!!!! the money freed up by this will generate so many jobs and such a successful economy that we'll be even MORE the envy of the world........ ah, but the readers here and writers here won't be convinced..... let's keep an eye on Venezuela for "leadership"...........

And ridding all Americans of the additional and unnecessary costs and burdens of unreliable and overly-expensive health insurance coverage would be the best thing that could possibly happen to our economy. It cost us $600 billion dollars, billions of wasted hours, at least 18,000 innocent lives lost, hundreds of thousands of preventable disablings, and around a million bankruptcies last year alone. Plus it causes 47 millions of our fellow Americans to have to live in a state of terror. Enough is enough already.

I misremembered and made a mistake. The top one percent are now estimated to own between forty and fifty percent of the nation's wealth, more than the bottom 95% combined.

would you prefer this... ? [serious question...] ....
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_basics_thumbnail

ps, spoon... if i'm comparing apples and oranges, why did you move from income and income tax to "wealth ownership" as a measure????? .............. are you queueing up a suggestion to redistribute the wealth??? ......... ah, maybe that's your goal for the new tax system........ hm? .......... :))))))))))

Spoon, He is so out to lunch as to be a waste of your time.

ad hominem to you, too, MM...
:)

Back at ya plusaf, Where ya been?

Well, I agree with everything you said right up until "we need universal coverage now, yesterday." This notion that if the Federal Government comes in an provides Universal Healthcare that everything will be rose petals and ice cream cones and we'll have free, fast, and excellent service COULD NOT be farther from the truth. You're in for a bureaucratic, red-tape nightmare ladies and gentlemen. What we need to do is LOWER the cost by addressing the REAL problem, which is government intervention and the created of the HMO. No one disputes the diagnosis: American health care is in lousy shape. The problems with our health care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market. It’s time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward “free” universal health care. One big problem arises from the 1974 ERISA law, which grants tax benefits to employers for providing health care, while not allowing similar incentives for individuals. This results in the illogical coupling between employment and health insurance. As such, government removed the market incentive for health insurance companies to cater to the actual health-care consumer. As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals. Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies. Such choices and options will arrive only when we unravel the HMO web rooted in old laws, and change the tax code to allow individual Americans to fully deduct all healthcare costs from their taxes, as employers can. As government bureaucracy continues to give preferences and protections to HMOs and trial lawyers, it will be the patients who lose, despite the glowing rhetoric from the special interests in Washington. Patients will pay ever rising prices and receive declining care while doctors continue to leave the profession in droves. The anser to the healthcare problem is freedom, NOT government control.

AMEN, z_l_b! ......... extremely-well-said!

@spoon.... you said...
I misremembered and made a mistake. The top one percent are now estimated to own between forty and fifty percent of the nation's wealth, more than the bottom 95% combined.

i point out on my http://www.plusaf.com/soapbox/flattax.htm page.....

============

The top 1% paid 37.4% of all federal income taxes;

The top 5% paid 56.7%.....

The top 10% paid 67.3%.....

The top 25% paid 84.0%.....

The top 50% paid 96.1%.....

That means that 50% of the country paid less than 4% of all incomes taxes. The proportion of taxes paid by the top half increases with each year, and will continue to do so. As Gartman points out, we will soon be in the situation where 50% of the voters pay no income tax, yet can vote for higher taxes to be paid by the top half."

=====================

re-lube your slide rule, spoon...

Get the for profit insurance companies out of it. Improve and expand Medicare. Why should about thirty percent of our health care dollars go to administrative costs? The health care dollars should go to the providers.

@MM---- could it ever be possible that the admin costs are, even in PART, due to gummint reporting regulations? ............. nah....... they just hire people to hire people and inflate costs, right?

so, if they're paid based on costs, it sounds like the old $500 hammer jokes from the military.... which were due to government reporting regulations....

is there a circle here?

i read a recent definition of "the function of government": to supply services that individuals can't provide for themselves. example: police, national defense.... but doctors weren't on the list.

why not?

Why not? Maybe they forgot them. In a free society people get choices. Looks like the Doctors and people are choosing health care. The reason the administrative costs are so high is high living and waste. I twice have been in the doctors office when lunch for the whole staff arrived courtesy of the drug salesman. It wasn't from McDonalds. A friend that is a doctor told me those guys give over the top lavish parties for the health care workers. Maybe, just maybe that is part of it, having nothing to do with bookkeeping.