Obama's budget: Taxing for fairness or class warfare?
Cartoon from Cagle.com
For those of us out there that have elderly family members today, we should be very scared. Scared because we know so little about what Obama's Healtcare reform plans are and what we do know is just enough to scare us. Right now I see him helping the people that in over their heads on mortgages that many of them should have never gotten themselves into to begin with. And then on the other hand I see him kicking my 84 year old father to the curb, so sorry for the "scare tactics", but yes I am very scared.
Heritage.org points out one part that has been outlined and that is the "Medicare Private Plan Payment Changes."
The Administration proposes cutting payments to Medicare Advantage plans. These plans are increasingly popular, enrolling one out of five senior citizens, and they provide richer and more varied packages of benefits than available under traditional Medicare. The Administration's estimate of overpayment to these plans is based on the inherently flawed payment formulas of the traditional Medicare system.
The Administration would replace the current Medicare Advantage payment with a new "competitive bidding" model for private health plans to participate in Medicare. According to press reports, private plans would submit bids and Medicare would pay the plans based on some average of these bids.So now companies are going to be bidding on your "well being", call me skeptical, but if they are "bidding" on my well being, is that going to be in "my best interest", or "their best interest", I believe its the latter, remember in the contracting world the cheapest bid is not always the most cost efficient bid, just sayin.
Much depends on the details of the process. If the process is a way for the government to pick "winners and losers" (like the Defense Department procurement process) that would deny other private options for Medicare beneficiaries, it would be a direct assault on personal choice and market competition. If the plan is designed as a way of establishing a more rational benchmark payment and allowing beneficiaries to pick the plan of their choice—paying extra for richer health plans or picking less expensive health plans and keeping the savings—it would be an improvement. Even better, the Administration could include traditional Medicare, with appropriate modifications, in the competitive bidding process.
Similarly, on healthcare, Obama has decided to put cost control above expanding coverage...
There's also a shift in investment priorities in the healthcare proposal. The fastest-growing part of the federal budget is spending for Medicare, a program that provides healthcare for the elderly. It is paid for by payroll taxes from people still in the workforce.
In essence, Medicare amounts to a resource shift from younger workers to older retirees. And the population of older retirees is rapidly growing relative to the workforce.
"The more we spend on the elderly, the less we can spend on other things, including education," Williams said. "We're doing an awful lot to support consumption in retirement, and that draws resources away from other uses."
Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, says Obama's plan amounts to an unfair redistribution of the tax burden. He said that the top 20% of taxpayers now pay 80% of all taxes collected by the government. And 40% of households pay no income tax.
Under Obama's plan, he said, the top 20% of tax filers would pay 90% of all taxes, and the number of families who owe no tax would climb to near 50%.
"President Obama is offering a free lunch to a lot of Americans on the backs of 5% of the taxpayers. That can be called class warfare," Riedl said. "I think a lot of Americans believe that even the rich should not face tax rates that add up to about 50%."
Recently Jeffrey Young at TheHill pointed out how little we know about the Obama Healthcare Plan
The agenda for health reform spelled out by President Obama’s budget is as provocative for what it leaves out as for what’s in it.
Obama made a bold statement on his commitment to tackling health reform this year, establishing a $630 billion reserve fund to pay for most of it, with half the money coming from tax increases and half from reducing spending on medical services.
But while the budget contains enough details to give Congress and healthcare industries plenty to mull over, the document is also telling for what Obama chose to exclude.
The budget, which is a roadmap for the Obama administration’s agenda across a wide swath of issues, does not address in any form some of the most contentious issues that drive the healthcare debate.
Though Obama’s positions are well-known from his presidential campaign, the notable absences from the budget will cheer or discomfit those on both sides of the issues.
Since he won election, Obama has indicated time and again that Congress has the authority and responsibility to write the health reform legislation.
By declining to include the full details of his vision for reforming healthcare, the president leaves himself considerable room to maneuver as he negotiates with Democrats and Republicans in Congress and tries to win the support of interest groups and the public.
Obama’s fill-in-the-blanks strategy is informed in large part by an assessment of why President Clinton failed to achieve the same goal of reforming the healthcare system. Unlike Clinton, Obama declared that his administration would not draft the bill and dump it off on Congress.
As illustrated by his plan to host a health reform summit at the White House next week, Obama has vowed to keep his ears open to proposals he did not embrace during the campaign.
“Now, there will be many different opinions and ideas about how to achieve reform, and that is why I’m bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and healthcare providers, Democrats and Republicans to begin work on this issue next week,” Obama said in his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night.
Health reform watchers should not expect greater detail when the full budget comes out in April, either, a senior White House Office of Management and Budget official told reporters on Thursday.
“He doesn’t just want to write up a plan and lay it on Congress’s desks,” the official said.
Perhaps the most notable omission from Obama’s health budget outline is whether the president will insist on a publicly financed health benefits program that would compete for customers with private health insurers. The public plan option is a must for liberal activists and is almost definitely going to be included in the legislation being developed by powerful Democratic committee chairmen.
The budget also does not say whether Obama wants to embrace a mandate that all people purchase insurance coverage or a “pay or play” mandate that all but the smallest employers offer health benefits unless they pay into a government fund.
Health insurance market reform, which would include manifold elements, also is not detailed in the budget.
During the campaign — as reflected by the healthcare plan outlined on the White House’s website — Obama took positions on all these matters.
The Obama health plan calls for a public plan option, a National Health Insurance Exchange to assist people with buying coverage, a “pay or play” mandate, tax credits for small business’s health insurance, expansions of Medicaid and other public programs and subsidies for individuals and families.
None of those provisions is included in the budget outline.
In their place is a set of principles on health reform or, in Obama’s words Thursday, “a historic commitment to comprehensive healthcare reform.”
Obama’s budget itself re-emphasizes this point: “The administration will explore all serious ideas that, in a fiscally responsible manner, achieve the common goals of constraining costs, expanding access and improving quality.”
The president seems to leave much of the heavy lifting to Congress, though many lawmakers like it that way. And while a less detailed budget may present a smaller target for lobbyists seeking to bring health reform down, it also opens the legislative process up to countless smaller lobbying battles that could go unnoticed amid wrangling by big players such as health insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and hospitals.
In reading through various blogs on this issue I ran across at great comment from a Freeper
In essence, Medicare amounts to a resource shift from younger workers to older retirees. And the population of older retirees is rapidly growing relative to the workforce.Scary but true!!
"The more we spend on the elderly, the less we can spend on other things, including education," Williams said. "We're doing an awful lot to support consumption in retirement, and that draws resources away from other uses."
I hope you all know what that means -- "it is UNFAIR to spend money on the older folks, they should just go off and die and not use up the resources, that should be spent on those still on the workforce".
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