Viewpoints
Health Insurance
By Alan Lidstone
January 28, 2007
Sunday PM
The President announced a new program to provide for a $7500/$15000
tax deduction for single/married taxpayers for medical insurance
and making the value of employer-provided medical coverage taxable
in the recent State of the Union speech.
Like many Americans, I am concerned that that the availability
of medical care to Americans is severely inadequate. I have serious
reservations about the value of the Administration proposal presented.
Preliminary estimates indicate that about 20% of the population
would have pay increased taxes. The plan makes no adjustments
for the variations in the cost of medical insurance affected
by health factors that increase the cost of coverage, or the
variations depending on the specific location where the taxpayer
lives.
In addition, the President indicated that his proposal, while
increasing the taxes for 20% of the 160-million people covered
by employer-provided plans. The proposed plan is decrease the
amount of uninsured people by 3-million to 5-million.
The NY Times summed it up in a 1/27/07 editiorial where the stated
"The economic rationale for Mr. Bush s proposal is that
too many people have gold-plated, deluxe health insurance,
which encourages them to use excessive amounts of health care,
driving up costs for everyone."
I have three questions:
(1) Does the President think Medicare Parts A, B, and D or Tricare
fall into the "gold-plated deluxe" health insurance
category?
(2) Does the proposal consider the medical care provided by the
Veterans Administration to fall into the "gold-plated deluxe"
health insurance category?
(3) Does the proposal consider the medical care that Vice-President
Cheney and other high-level Executive Branch and Congressional
members who never served in the Armed Forces obtain free care
at Walter Reed and Bestheda medical facilities to fall into
gold-plated, deluxe health insurance category?
Regards,
Alan Lidstone
Venice, FL
Received January 28, 2007 - Published January 28, 2006
About: Retired computer systems
engineer and Naval Officer
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