The "Affordable Care Act" is training wheels for us to go on single payer health care. It does some good things, but for those who earn money beyond the subsidies, the health care costs are painful where its just as hurtful as actual taxes which leads to the movement to repeal it. For a family making 126k a year it would be like 12.9% of their income and the deductables would be super high which makes health insurance pointless.
I know the progressives want single payer, but unless we pay down our budget deficit a bit, I do not feel comfortable with the start up
costs.
On the other hand, Republicans seem to have a significant aversion to doing anything at all that will help average people and make their lives easier.
On the other hand, *politicans* seem to have a significant aversion to doing anything at all that will help average people and make their lives easier.
Aaron Goldblatt wrote to Utopian Galt <=-
I know the progressives want single payer, but unless we pay down our budget deficit a bit, I do not feel comfortable with the start up
costs.
Reforming our tax system such that all incomes pay something
approximating a fair share, and reforming defense spending, would go a long way toward paying for the creation of a national health system and
a stable Social Security system.
Non-exhaustive example: Defense spending is known to be rife with
waste, but efforts to control it and figure out what money is actually being spent on are stymied at every turn (and this week's firing of the Inspector General at DOD will not help). Defense spending is the number general line item in the budget after Social Security (see below), yet nobody wants to make any serious effort to touch it. Social Security
used to be the third rail of politics; now it seems to be guns.
Non-exhaustive example: Social security could be considerably shored up
by lifting the maximum income limit on the tax (currently approximately $176,000).
Non-exhaustive example: Taxing capital gains at a higher rate than we
do presently, especially for gains values over $1 million. Currently,
the individual rate sits at 20%, down from a maximum of 35% in 1979,
and the corporate rate sits at 21%, down from a maximum of 35%
beginning in 1993. Yet it's well known that large corporations pay
little to nothing, sometimes even getting millions to hundreds of
millions in refunds. In a fair system, that would not happen.
Instead, politicians focus on penny-anty nonsense like cutting NASA and the USPS (both respectively less than 0.06% of the total spend in
2024). The USPS in particular would be self-supporting if not for that silly retirement pre-funding accounting gimmick that no other business
in the world is required to use. (And there is a significant argument
to be made that not everything must be for-profit.)
On the other hand, Republicans seem to have a significant aversion to doing anything at all that will help average people and make their
lives easier. Non-exhaustive examples: Proposals to repeal the ACA
without any kind of plan to replace it, despite now having had 14 years
to come up with something; litigation and plans in legislation to
destroy the SAVE plan for student loan borrowers; continual attempts to tighten eligibility for Medicaid, SSDI, SNAP and school lunches.
make ends meet and pay my bills. That acct is almost dry now.
That's my reality... not some stupid notion that Trump is going to take my health insurance away.
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