Medicare-for-All new tax a lot less than Health Insurance premiums and other costs now!!

Medicare-for-All already clearly tells us how it will be paid for, so it’s was disappointing to see the Democratic presidential contenders ganging up on Elizabeth Warren over how we’re going to pay for it when it’s already obvious. Some of it will be in the payroll tax, FICA.

What Warren’s opponents were suggesting was free health insurance, a pathetic and misleading path to take.

Democrats were saying, especially Beto O’Rourke, that a tax would hurt the lower and middle class.

O’Rourke’s campaign took another swipe at Warren. “Beto has been very clear that he will not raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000 a year.

Uh, everyone who earns an income is already paying a tax for Medicare, and the amount being taxed is dependent on income, so the working poor will not be disproportionally hurt.

But even this doesn’t preclude exempting – or even including a progressive fractional percentage – to the lower portion of someone’s income.

But to suggest it should be free, with no tax increase, is playing right into the “no tax” ridiculousness of Republican politics. Democrats should be better than this.

Some kind of progressive increase to everyone’s FICA tax is a whole lot better and dramatically less costly than…

1. Yearly premium increases.

2. Shopping for insurance.

3. Co-Pays and huge Deductibles.

4. Surprise medical bills.

5. Unaffordable drug prices.

6. Denial of coverage.

7. Increasing employee health care premiums.

8. Forming associations to buy group insurance.

9. Union employees renegotiating insurance coverage.

10. Health care Bankruptcy.

11. The growing number of preventable deaths.

12. Out-of-network costs.

13. Drug Testing.

14. Work Requirements.

15. Continuing to support a horribly broken system.

Plus standardizing the cost of every medical procedure nationwide will go a long way to reform the disproportionate price differences we’re now seeing, resulting in medical vacations out of the U.S. and hospital consolidation.

PolitiFact also included this rating:

“For people making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, their taxes are going up about $5,000 because the fact is, they will pay more in new taxes” for Medicare for All. — Former vice president Joe Biden

This is Mostly False. Biden used an unusual level of specificity … families making between $50,000 and $75,000 per year … impact of a 4% income tax, plus a 7.5% payroll tax … This math is problematic on many levels. For one thing, Sanders’ bill doesn’t include any financing mechanism at all.

Another problem is that highlighting the potential tax burden of Medicare for All without discussing overall costs is misleading.

A former liberal radio talk host who likes to ask the “follow-up question” at Democurmudgeon.blogspot.com