Friday, September 25, 2009

Follow the Money

What I find real annoying about all the town hall / radio talks that went on about paying for health care is that the real question comes down to a very simple fundamental point: How much taxes do we extract from the 70 million people who actually PAY SOME taxes in order to support the 40 million NEW people that the President wants to cover with (free) health benefits to them and to support the 40 million tax payers who pay NO federal tax and who also will be given free health benefits - i.e: be forever be ENTITLED to get something for free since OTHER people will be paying for it - it is always great to have a majority of people voting to extract money from the minority in a "democratic" fashion.
This means the government must ensure that 70 million people who ALREADY pay for their own health benefits must also support 80 million people who will not pay any toward it at all - so it effectively means you HAVE to tax those 70 million people AT LEAST an amount equal to what they pay in private insurance in order to cover those 80 million new people.
And since every good "progressive" based system will create a sliding scale of new taxes, some people will have to pay new taxes to support 8 people while some at the lower end will pay enough only to support a ".1" new person in order for the math to ensure that enough money is collected to balance the amount that WILL be paid out to pay for medical costs.
Right now "rich people" is any couple (or business that flows taxes though a schedule C income tax method) who GROSSES over $250,000 a year - which is like 80% of all "small" businesses. It would mean each one of them would HAVE to pay at least $13,000 more a year in taxes to cover the medical COSTS - REAL costs not the insurance rate - that WILL BE provided to 80 million new people. Think about a very simple fact of life: if there are only 2 million women in that group of 80 million who can have kids over the next 10 years, and 200,000 a year have a kid which costs $12,000 in total medical costs to have, that alone means $2 BILLION 400 MILLION dollars would have to be collected just to pay for this group of people having a kid. Add in that if 79,800,000 each year go and have a doctor visit for just routine stuff 4 times a year - that adds in $3,000 in normal expenses (dental, medical, psychological is all covered) that alone means $2 TRILLION 394 BILLION dollars needs to be collected each and every year to cover all those people for just ROUTINE stuff. And the plan ENCOURAGES preventive medicine and doctor visits - and now you can see why many people do not want the government to mandate and collect taxes even if OTHERS run this whole program. If someone makes the argument that $3,000 is excessive - try and find a full coverage medical plan for $3,000 a year. Eyeglasses alone can cost $400 a year for visits and new glasses. A simple trip to the ER and broken bone could run $2,600. I'm talks REAL COSTS here - not per individual. Remember - insurance is spreading RISK to a large group of people expecting that a percentage will have problems and the insurance company is BETTING that it can take in enough money to cover the expenses of those who have problems. And the costs will ONLY go up due to the way the rules that the Government implements and forces others to follow by design is inefficient.