Last year Obama said that private and government health-care can coexist. To support his argument, he pointed to the US Post Office and FedEx. Let’s discuss this.
The Post Office announced that it was running a huge deficit and was exploring ways to keep it afloat. Some of the ideas being floated are to cut services to 5 days a week, reducing benefits to its employees, and increases rates. Is this what we can expect to happen with government run health-care; cutting services or in the case of health-care, not covering those things that are now covered by health-care; increasing premiums; and slashing the payments that doctors, nurses, and physicians receive for their work? I’m just asking. After all, Obama himself, used the comparison to support his case for government-run health-care.
Already, Obama has gone back on his word; the very word he gave in his address to Congress when Joe Wilson called him a liar. Obama stated that health-care would be paid for by those who paid their premiums. In the Senate bill being negotiated, there are a series of taxes that are being included. These taxes include an increase in the payroll tax. This is on top of the soon to expire Bush tax cuts that will see the average middle income tax increase by 7%. As a reminder, these were the Bush tax cuts:
- A reduction of individual income tax rates from 15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6 percent to 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent;
- An increase in the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000;
- A phased-in reduction in estate taxes, and a one-year repeal in 2010;
- A big expansion of tax-favored retirement savings plans;
- Reduced the individual capital gains tax from 35% to 15%.
In Obama’s budget, the President allowed for the expiring of these cuts while claiming that he “wasn’t increasing taxes on the middle class. In fact, Obama often touts his tax “cuts” he “gave” to the middle class that averaged around $400 per year. Again, the president has been a little loose with the truth. Those filing their 2009 taxes learned that this $400 was nothing more than a tax credit and would be deducted from their their 2009 return. In essence, you would have gotten the $400 back anyways.
The question should be asked, if Obama’s health-care bill will save money and increase services then why is he having to deceive and lie about its cost? Is his health-care program really going to cost us less? Let’s think about this. If Obama is promising me that his health-care plan will cost me less than my employer’s United Health-Care plan (I pay $138 a month), but he’s increasing my taxes by $302 per month how is this making sense? This health-care plan is not about reducing cost, if it was then we would have Tort Reform tied to any plan before the Congress, this is about the socialization of this country and that is why a majority of Americans are opposed to this legislation.
Let’s go back to the drawing board and develop a plan that covers pre-existing conditions, includes Tort Reform, rewards those who live a healthy life through diet and exercise, penalizes people like Obama who smoke, cuts fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare, and is run by the private sector.
