IT'S TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

George and CI: Having returned from The City, let me give you the details of the Democrats' fiscal policy in general, and the financing of their health care reforms in particular.

First, you have the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which the Republican Congresses had built into the cuts themselves and therefore didn't require any action by the new, Democratic Congress. It raises the top marginal income tax rate to 39%, and applies to annual incomes above $370,000. (For simplicity, I'm using round numbers and the thresholds for single filers.)

On top of that comes what the House bill calls a "surcharge" to the income tax. It is specified in H.R. 3200, the Affordable Health Choices Act as passed by the House. (PDF here. -- the bill is currently on its way to the Senate.) Specifically, you can find it under Subtitle D, section 441: Surcharge on High Income Individuals. Under this section, your income taxes get raised --

• by 1% on all income between $350,000 and $500,000, for a total of 40%.
  
• by 1.5% on all income between $500,000 and $1,000,000, for a total of 40.5%
  
• by 5.4% on all income over $1,000,000, for a total of 44.4%.

Admittedly, the current bill creates more brackets than I had remembered from the top of my head. And the new top marginal income tax rate is not going to be the 45% I had remembered, but only 44.4%. So sue me.

Now, Georgeob1 and CI, you tell me why Democrats are disingenuous in calling this bill deficit-neutral.

I don't think it has yet passed the House. Prior to the recess, the bill was ordered to be reported to the full legislative body by three of the five committees the bill was referred to for consideration. See: status

My bad. Thanks for the correction!

I find that funny okie considering Oklahoma is one of the least libertarian and most authoritarian states in the nation.

What happened to the map showing economic authoritarian vs economic libertarian? Your map is a joke. Also, the devil is probably in the details, such as would you classify laws against murder as authoritarian? Gee, that would be terrible to do that, wouldn't it? Also, are gun ownership laws included in the map? Somehow I doubt it. How about leash laws, or laws in regard to keeping animals, I could think of lots of things to ask. I think your map is nothing more than somebodys's imagination running overtime.

Mmm hmm. Anything to avoid recognizing the fact that you come from a Conservative, Authoritarian, ass-backwards state.

Cycloptichorn

Oklahoma is fairly conservative, yes, but authoritarian, no. Your map is a joke. Take Colorado, it is more authoritarian than Oklahoma, in my opinion by far.

What, is that your 'informed opinion?'

Oklahoma is the most Conservative state in the nation, by polling. An ideological backwater. How a great band like the Flaming Lips ever managed to arise from that place, I'll never know.

Cycloptichorn

Uh, I think your map was compiled by a flaming liberal on some website called gotoquiz, incorporating huge bias. A quick perusal confirmed my suspicion. I would suggest it is worthless.

okie "always" provides his personal opinion with providing any evidence for it; this is a good example. His credibility must be below zero, but people like Foxie continues to defend him.

Speaking of evidence, Parados map was posted without one iota of evidence. I would like to see that by the way.

From the map link:


okie, If you still don't believe them, you'll have to ask the producers of the map why you disagree with their conclusions.

Yes, and I looked at one of the quiz questions, and boy was it fraudulant and framed in a bias way! It had a pre-conceived notion built into the question, so again, I would not take the questions seriously. Kind of like have you quit beating your wife, ci?

And from "one of the quiz" questions, you were able to arrive at your conclusion? How many questions were there? One?

I am not going to do your research. I don't have time to study some stupid website with stupid questions. If parados wants to provide a map that supposedly proves something, it is incumbent upon him to provide the evidence behind the map in some detail, what it is based upon. I could care less about the map that is obviously wrong, as i have lived in more states than Oklahoma and do not find Oklahoma any more authoritarian or as much so as other places, the premise is utterly ridiculous on its face.

yeahhhh... what happened there? they seem to have gotten very un-rocky mountain high there abouts.

okie, It doesn't work that way; you can't off-hand just say something is not reliable without providing evidence as to why. They even said how their survey was taken.

Your opinions are never based on evidence, but your own imagination/perception. How credible do you think your opinions are on a2k?

Thanks, Thomas, for the tutorial on the various Democrat proposals for tax increases. Interesting and informative as it was, it doesn't address the basic question as to whether the various health care (or insurance as they now call it) proposals will be deficit neutral - even with these proposed tax increases. The basic fact is the Congressional Budget Office has seriously disputed the Administration's claims for the net budget impact of these proposals - and the numerical differences are very large. Even the CBO has underestimated the future budget impact of many proposed initiatives, so their analysis cannot simply be dismissed out of hand as you appear to suggest.

There are other issues as well. Previous forecasts about the net effect on government revenues of proposed tax increases have been off the mark by large margins because the net economic effect of taxation is difficult to forecast in detail. It isn't likely that the administration's forecasts in this area are conservative in any way - they are more likely to be very optimistic. Same goes for the "efficiencies" they propose to create in MEDICARE by simply reducing the amount they pay for various services. I recognize that you don't share my contempt for any juxtaposition of efficiency and government, however you should concede that in general government is not reknowned for the efficiency of its management.

I do agree that there is no single health care proposal out there. There are instead the rather loosely coordinated efforts of various House and Senate Committees. So far the initiave appears to have been in the hands of the committed true believers in the ability of the "progressive" cognoscenti to figure out what is good for the rest of us. Saner heads are likely to influence the later stages. Unfortunately, the current Administration (President and Congress) has not shown much concern for deficits or national debt and their consequences - they're even worse than the last Administration. That makes most objective observers of the scene very suspicious of the results they are likely to produce. Surely you don't argue with that.

And to piggy-back on georgeob's post, we all know what happened to the estimates on how long the social security trust will will last; COB said until 2042. They were unable to predict this financial crisis as millions of people have lost their jobs, so the 2042 projection is now void.

As I've said before, there is no way for humans to predict future economic activity. When anybody tries to predict economic activity/results for the next ten years, it belongs on the laffer curve.

It's the same with the current planning for universal health care's cost and taxation recovery. They try to predict it on a one dimensional scale (health care), and that also belongs on the laffer curve.

The Iraq war was supposed to cost our country $50 billion. They weren't even close! We were spending $2 billion every week during recent months until the draw-down of our troops. With the world economy in a shambles, those billions are really costing our country much more in increased debt.

This isn't true; that's the date at which SS will be able to pay out less than 70% of their yearly bills. It isn't the point at which the 'trust' runs out, it's the point where the gov't has to repay all the money they have taken from the trust over the years.

Cycloptichorn