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I wonder how many who support McCain have read and understood McCain's health care plan. How many of you have employer provided health care? If you do, you will now be taxed on that employer provided health insurance as income. Let's say that your employer pays the average of $12,000 for your insurance. Right now he can use that as a business expense on the company's taxes and that makes it possible for your employer to provide you this benefit.
Under McCain's plan, two things will change.
#1. Your employer can no longer use the money paid for your health insurance benefit as a tax deductible business expense.
#2. The $12,000 paid for that benefit will now be added to W2 as "Taxable Income." You won't get one penny more but you will be taxed on $12,000 more income.
John will allow you a $5,000 tax deduction to "offset" that. However, many families making $30,000 a year don't PAY $5,000 in taxes so that deduction will be of no use to them. AND, even if you do pay more than $5,000 in taxes, your deduction won't even pay for HALF of what it will cost you to purchase the insurance.
This enormous tax hike for the working family at the same time that he is giving the richest 1 % ANOTHER 30 billion dollar tax CUT.
Still think he is looking out for you?
It isn't bad enough that millions of Americans have no health insurance. He wants to be sure none but the richest have it now.
Here you go. A link to John McCain's own site. Read carefully. And recognize that NO WHERE in his plan does he cite the COST of health insurance to the purchaser.
I wonder how many who support McCain have read and understood McCain's health care plan. How many of you have employer provided health care? If you do, you will now be taxed on that employer provided health insurance as income. Let's say that your employer pays the average of $12,000 for your insurance. Right now he can use that as a business expense on the company's taxes and that makes it possible for your employer to provide you this benefit.
Under McCain's plan, two things will change.
#1. Your employer can no longer use the money paid for your health insurance benefit as a tax deductible business expense.
#2. The $12,000 paid for that benefit will now be added to W2 as "Taxable Income." You won't get one penny more but you will be taxed on $12,000 more income.
John will allow you a $5,000 tax deduction to "offset" that. However, many families making $30,000 a year don't PAY $5,000 in taxes so that deduction will be of no use to them. AND, even if you do pay more than $5,000 in taxes, your deduction won't even pay for HALF of what it will cost you to purchase the insurance.
This enormous tax hike for the working family at the same time that he is giving the richest 1 % ANOTHER 30 billion dollar tax CUT.
Still think he is looking out for you?
It isn't bad enough that millions of Americans have no health insurance. He wants to be sure none but the richest have it now.
Link? Quote? Proof?
"Right now he can use that as a business expense" He can, but isn't required to and most don't, and have you tried to find a job lately with any health care insurance, let alone good coverage?
Under the Obama plan the government and employers decide if I get coverage. Under McCain's plan I get the benefits in the form of a tax credit that I can take with me when I go job hunting to negotiate my employer's contribution along with my wages.
Obama's plan will result in a tax credit for an employer who I don't trust any more than the government.
And what if your self-employed?
Check my new thread "Obama's health care, fact or fiction"
I would be very wary of re-importation and faster introduction of generics. Just look at what's happening in China right now.
Unfortunately, good old genetics rears its ugly head regarding prevention, and "healthy habits". Those commercials about cholesterol are correct. What "new treatment models" and "new public health infrastructure" does John McCain propose? He doesn't say. The idea that use of information technology will drastically reduce costs is a pipe dream.
We're not China.
Giving the tax credit to your employer instead of you means that he controls your health care instead of you. Now you have to negotiate with him for the benifits that are rightfully yours. If you get the tax credit yourself, you can negotiate on your own behaf for an employer's contribution along with wages and the benefit follows you where ever you go. It's just that simple.
Did you read the right plan? McCain is NOT going to make it any easier for anyone to get health care. He is going to tax healthcare for the first time ever. Simple!
But McCain is offering a tax credit to offset the tax.
Come on guys... don't you know how to read???
READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY AND HIS EXAMPLE!!!!
http://www.johnmccain.com/content/default.aspx?guid=9b94f39b-1650-4a3a-89ef-fba8cba4c868 (broken link)
As is yours. And I live out west, and have never heard of these guys, so maybe they aren't the most respected economists in the area. I have also read a lot of other stuff about this issue. Yours isn't the first article I've ever read. I believe it was Newsweek that said that McCain's plan would be the most expensive for the consumer.
Economist? Ask five economists the same question and you'll get six different answers.
Newsweek? Why do you intelligent people rely of the opinions of others?
I've read both plans. The main difference I see between the two is the Obama plan provides an employer a tax credit that they may simply not bother with. As far as I can tell their is no mandate. Someone correct me if I missed something. So if I'm self-employed I'm screwed. If my employer doesn't want to participate I'm screwed. If he wants to use the tax credit that I ultimately pay for as compensation for which I'll have to give something up (like wages), he can do that. So how is this not a tax break for my employer that I pay for? ....anyone?
The McCain plan gives the tax credit to me and it doesn't go anywhere without me attached. It's mine! I can use it as leverage on an employer who is trying to buy bulk insurance for his employees. See how it doesn't go in one direction while the employees go in another. And if I'm self-employed, I still get help. If I don't work, I still get help.
If Obama is elected, and this plan is put in place, in a couple years, IMO, the fact that the benefit was not attached to the individual will be it's downfall. Employers will exploit the benefits of the tax credit while leveraging wages down, down, down....
Um, most (I'd like to say all, but I don't know if that's fact) of the medications we buy in the West aren't made in China. Since I used to live close to Mexico, I'd hop the border and buy some of my meds there because they were so much cheaper. I wouldn't accept a med. that was made in China but I never encountered one, anyway. They were all manufactured in Ireland by the major pharmaceutical companies.
Also, other countries have generic alternatives MUCH faster than we do. I'll give you one example -- when I was in my waiting period for Medicare, there was NO WAY I could afford my major Lupus drug, Cellcept. My prescription here retails at about $2,000 per month and there is no generic available.
I have a good friend in Canada who checked there for me. My NAMEBRAND prescription cost about $700 for 200 tablets, which would last me almost two months; PLUS, they had a generic version available for about $370 for 200 tablets.
This is one drug and one patient -- a savings of $18,000 ANNUALLY just for me! Can you IMAGINE how much savings we could see as a nation?!
You do realize that making generics available to the market earlier than current patent law allows is direct interference in the free enterprise system that you claim to cherish? Pharmaceutical companies spend years and lots of money developing new medications; they need the lengthy patent period in order to recover their costs. What you are suggesting is creeping socialism.
The McCain plan gives the tax credit to me and it doesn't go anywhere without me attached. It's mine! I can use it as leverage on an employer who is trying to buy bulk insurance for his employees. See how it doesn't go in one direction while the employees go in another. And if I'm self-employed, I still get help. If I don't work, I still get help.
Exactly. You receive the tax credit of $2500 for individuals or $5000 for families whether you work or not.
If there are tax savings, the savings goes to your HSA (health savings account) which stays with you wherever you go.
This plan is being brought to you by the same people who decided that a pension was a terrible idea. 401Ks were the way to go, the stock market was the way to go. Check with the stock market and see how that went.
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