In other words, a rent (in the sense of rentier capitalism). Most Americans will confuse that with what they pay the landlord, so re-framing it as a “private tax” or a “tax paid to corporations” is definitely a better way to go.
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That’s true, but there is going to be a lot more options for people out there. A smaller company can’t add more people as easily due to health costs. A person with a family can’t take a job that doesn’t offer health care, and may end up stuck in a corporation they don’t like.
IIRC the whole way this thing started was wages WERE regulated, so larger companies adding extra benefits is how they attracted people. It slowly morphed into this.
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A second for Knowing Better. I really enjoy his stuff.
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That’s exactly right: during WWII, the government froze wages for most types of jobs. Businesses had to get creative to compete for the best employees.
I actually had this happen on a personal level in the 1980s. I was working for a group of small businesses sharing one large office space. One of the companies wanted me to work more for them on higher level issues, but my contract stated that I had to be paid equally by all the companies. So, they started paying my health insurance premium every month, which was approximately the same cost as my rent. You better believe I put their work first in my prioritizing!
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Most companies that pay for healthcare subsidize a significant amount, and that does not show up on the paycheck.
It seems pretty clear to me that medicare for all will have to do have some tax on employers based on the wages they pay, to recapture this money. Otherwise they will just keep the windfall. This could also even the playing field; employers who didn’t pay for healthcare in the past would pay more, and employers who paid for healthcare would pay less. That would help soften the blow to the ‘good guys’.
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It’s important to remember/consider that federal-government programs are not funded by federal taxes. As per MMT, dollars are created and injected into the economy when legislation is passed. Taxing the dollars back in is a separate undertaking.
Talking about which taxes will fund which programs is a bullshit framing that the corporate elites have propagandized us into believing. The defense contractors, bankers, and billionaires understand how it works. The rest of us need to wise up to it.
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Reminder that Americans already spend more on state-funded healthcare than just about anyone else, without actually getting universal healthcare.
This is not because American illnesses are innately more expensive to treat, it’s because every sector of the profit-driven American healthcare industry is ripping y’all off to a ludicrous degree.
Step 1 in fixing American healthcare: annihilate the for-profit health insurance industry. Any plan which does not put that front and centre is designed to fail.
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But how are you going to pay for a healthcare system that cost significantly less than the current system??? :]
How are going pay for that?
How are going pay for that?
How are going pay for that?
And now, more on Trump’s latest tweet…
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It’s a half hour long, but absolutely worth the time invested. If you question whether we can afford Medicare for all, watch the video.
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I’m certain that’s one of the details to work out during the legislative process. Why give up before even trying?
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What “putative 15k raise”? The secretary is paid $65k/yr. That’s the income, that’s what they’re charged taxes on, etc. (assuming they don’t itemize.) Currently they’re paying $1250/mo for what I assume is either insurance for their entire family or their healthcare overall, let’s say the former. If they’re like me, they never even see a health insurance bill: they authorize their employer to automatically deduct insurance bought through the company from their paycheck just like their taxes. The only difference the secretary sees is that because M4A costs less than private healthcare, they’re going to receive a raise whether or not their company gives them one.
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you don’t seem to understand that taxes in the usa work on a progressive, marginal tax rate basis so that only the dollars that one earns above the highest tax bracket one falls into are taxed at the highest rate. for example, if a married couple filing jointly were at the top end of the 12% bracket (say $77,000) their combined taxable income would have to rise by $25,400 before they would be subject to an additional $5,500 in income taxes in their new 22% bracket which still gives them a net $19,900 over what they made before their raise. another example, a single earner making $82,000 would have to have an increase in their taxable income of around $23,400 before they would have to pay an additional $5,500 in taxes in their new 24% bracket which would still leave them with a net $17,900 over what they earned without the wage increase.
if the only additional income they got was the $5,500 because they were no longer paying the premiums the couple above would pay an additional $1,100 in taxes while the individual would pay an additional $1,200 in taxes. each would see a net pay increase of around $4000.
edited to use the correct designation of taxable income in the instances above because i neglected to consider the effect standard deductions and/or tax sheltered retirement account payments.
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Places I’ve worked have often subsidized it entirely for the employee, with costs only showing up if you add family members. And the government subsidizes them for providing health care already to boot, by letting them deduct it.
They also pay a flat tax on your income for medicare (and social security, but regressive) already, which does not show up on your pay stub and is (usually) equal to the amount that does show up there. The company would rightly consider this part of your salary package and do the accounting accordingly, even though you never see the money. So right now, in addition to the health insurance costs, they’re also paying out about an additional 7% or so.
Most people appear to have essentially no understanding of these things.
I think it’s clear that any systemic change will require some basic planning skills on the part of congressional staffers, and no matter what they do it is absolutely assured that most people won’t understand it and many will angrily rant about it for the rest of their lives.
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How does every other developed economy pay for it?
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Countries that don’t issue their own currency have to collect or borrow money to fund their budgets directly. Those countries (and entities) are basically at the mercy of issuers / controllers of the currency.
The countries that do issue their own currency operate differently and have a lot more control. The U.S., as the issuer of dollars (the reserve currency of the most of the world), is in a unique and powerful position.
The U.S. can fund basically anything it chooses to. Providing unlimited funding to the war machine and the banking industry while letting healthcare operate in a “free market” (ha!) is a governmental choice. It is an outrage.
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Like all the civilized countries, we should pay taxes to fund services that do not make sense to fund via for profit corporations. This is not rocket surgery. It’s looking at what actually works and implementing that so that people do not go fucking bankrupt for the “crime” of getting sick…
Stop trying to make this more complicated than it actually is.
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Accepting the “how are you going to pay that” framing of the corporate elites has lead us to where we are now. It’s not about making it more complicated – that’s their game. It’s about seeing through to how these systems really operate.
You are not being clear. If you feel like citizens should pay out the nose to a for profit corporation for life and death decisions, say so. If you feel that we should collective pay taxes for a public system where people do not go bankrupt for getting cancer, say so.
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I’m saying that the corporate elites present us with a false choice: Either stay with the brutal, morally reprehensible status quo, or sign on to paying higher taxes to have nice things (like a healthcare system that values people more than money).
Whenever Congress pushes through its latest round of obscene military spending, no one says, “Hey, will this cause people’s taxes to increase?” Same for things like big bank bailouts.
It’s a con. When it benefits billionaires, mega-corps, and war profiteers, the appropriations bills sail on through. When it’s for the 99%, the talk is all about budgets, debt, taxes, pay-go.
Single-payer (improved) medicare-for-all should be passed and enacted, with the funds for it being appropriated as needed (like we do with military spending). Major tax reforms should be implemented, with the explicit goal of reducing wealth and income inequality. Making one of these contingent on the other plays into the hands of the corporate interests and their greed.
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Well, we in the UK seem to be doing just that. I say “we” but what I mean is “a bunch of hard right greedy unprincipled arseholes.” It looks as though just as you adopt universal health care they’ll get rid of it by selling it to you. It’s enraging.
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