JimfromPennsylvania

One thing is clear to the vast majority of reasonable Americans that have even a minimal knowledge of the operation of the healthcare system in the U.S. and that is the American people can do dramatically better than what is currently occurring in lowering costs, getting more value for healthcare dollar’s spent and containing yearly increases in costs in the U.S. healthcare system. The fundamental, keystone question is will members of Congress and the President display the political will needed to pass the legislation needed to fix the U.S. Healthcare system.

I)
In focusing on the issue of will U.S. politicians get the political will to do the right thing here; this whole situation can be vastly improved if the nation ramps up the public call and pressure on Congress and the President to act on this matter. And the way to ramp up public pressure is to make more Americans feel the expense of the healthcare system so that they will have the motivation to turn to their elected officials for relief. Part of the problem right now is that many Americans have a nice arrangement with their healthcare situation, they either have incomes high enough where they can pay the premium, co-pays and co-insurance “no” problem or their employer provides great heath insurance coverage that is, low premiums, low co-pays and the like. To address the high-income American aspect of this problem, our country needs to make a portion of the premiums a high-income American’s employer or business pays for that individual’s health insurance plus a portion of the amount of premiums the high-income American him or herself pays taxable to that high-income American, presently none of the contributions are taxable. Make the rules be like if your individual/family income is 125K/175K respectively only 90% of the premiums are excluded from being taxed and as those income figures increases in 50K intervals have the excluded premium amount decrease by 20% until it zeroes out at 375K/425K respectively. It should also be mandated that on W-2 forms and 1040 forms the non-excluded insurance premium payments aren’t lumped in with ordinary income there is a separate category on these forms for non-excluded insurance premium income, make it clear to these high income Americans the costs they are paying for healthcare. For high-income Americans limit how much they can put in Flexible Spending Accounts (for individual/family income of 200K/250K per year make the limit 2K per year and zero out the limit at 300K/400K per year) or Health Savings Accounts (instead of the 2K limit make it 65% of whatever the current legal limit is and have the balance of the limits mirror the proposed FSA limits). The U.S. government should mandate that this additional tax revenue should be distributed to the states to provide subsidies for health care insurance for their lower-income residents. Not only will this initiative get high income Americans to use more of their political power to have Washington solve this problem but it is also fair our nation has 46 million uninsured the fairest way to raise money to solve this problem is to have those individuals who benefit the most economically from the U.S. economy provide most of the money – the same logic of ability to pay seems to be the way our country is heading on Medicare premiums for seniors so it really shouldn’t be a surprise to the American people the U.S. government is taking this initiative. To address the issue of how to get more Americans that currently have great arrangements with health insurance to feel the expense of health care and appreciate what the balance of Americans are going through, the U.S. government should mandate that every employee making 25K per year or greater who gets health insurance through his or her employer pay at least four (3.5) percent of their income toward the health insurance premium costs up to twenty-five (25) percent of the total insurance premium costs – it could be implemented over a six year period, that is, the employee must pay 1.75% within 3 years and 3.5% within 6years, if a current collective bargaining agreement runs longer than 3 or 6 years the deadline can be extended to when the agreement is renewed. The other benefit of this minimum premium participation initiative is that it would help U.S. employers who are experiencing a crushing effect from health care costs and it does it in a manner that isn’t an excessive burden on U.S. employees and it gives these employees a vested interest in keeping health care costs as low as possible which is a necessary part of the solution to this national problem.

Two final notes on this topic, if anyone doubts the effect of having high-income Americans feel the expense of the healthcare system personally and having that cause a positive effect on politicians in Washington to fix the U.S. health care system look at the alternative minimum tax issue. Although this issue largely has to do with upper middle class Americans as opposed to high-income Americans being spared increased tax bills in the thousands of dollars per year range, every year politicians in Washington come to the rescue of these more affluent Americans because they know they could not justify to these voters to do otherwise and this voting block is powerful. Clear thinking would conclude that the high-income American voting block is also powerful and they will not accept from Washington politician all the financial excesses that exist today in the U.S. health care system that will be impacting them more significantly and for self-preservation reasons Washington politicians will solve these problems. Lastly, if our society is really to be an ideal society all U.S. workers whether you’re high income or not high income workers should have the vast majority of their health insurance paid for by their employer. Health care isn’t a luxury item people need health care for their health and well-being, a person that is a full-time worker has a fundamental and natural right to health-care and the primary beneficiary of that workers work , the employer, should be the primary payer for that health care, it is only fair. The current disastrous state of the U.S. Healthcare system requires our nation to put off until this system is fixed striving for this ideal. However, once the U.S. healthcare system is fixed, our country should be looking for a dedicated funding source to pay for healthcare insurance for lower-income Americans and allow high-income Americans to be treated like everyone else, that is, to have their employer premium contribution be exempt from taxes. A potential dedicated funding source would be from revenue from opening up ANWR or our nation’s coastal waters to drilling for oil and natural gas. But any Washington politician with any claims to good judgment would not pursue trying to bring such a dedicated funding source on-line while our nation continues its irresponsible use of carbon fuels to power the motor vehicles it uses, if drilling legislation passed in Washington with America’s present irresponsible energy use, the number of politicians supporting that legislation that would lose their jobs over the matter would be so high it would be well remembered for generations to come in America. Maybe after American leaders bring dramatic amounts of new land on-line for farming in our land-rich nation to produce crops that can be used to produce ethanol for motor vehicle fuel and automakers selling automobiles in the U.S. make the full-use of electric-hybrid technology that is currently possible in the design of the vehicles they sell and the nation doubles its number of nuclear plants to generate the electricity to power these automobiles (so we can get away from the current coal fired power plants whose existence with like plants throughout the world is going to cause a global warming catastrophe for the whole planet based on the present course of things) then our nation can pursue this dedicated funding source from drilling.

(See Part Two)