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The House Democrats just released their health care plan. You'll have to forgive me, because I confess that I did not read through the entire 1018-page piece of legislation. However, I did look at the summary and scan through the tax provisions, and based on that it seems clear that the bill represents a liberal health care wish list.

In short, the bill would:

-- Create a new government-run plan.

--Expand Medicaid elgibility to 133 percent of the poverty line.

--Provide subsidies to individuals earning up to 400 percent of the poverty line ($88,000 for a family of four).

--Create a new government-run insurance exchange in which individuals could use the subsidies to purchase government-designed private coverarge or the government-run plan.

--Force individuals who purchase health coverage or face a tax, and force businesses to provide coverage or face at tax.

--And this will be financed by a massive tax hike during a recession on wealthy individuals that will target gross income. Americans for Tax Reform has calculated that taken together, these tax hikes would raise the top rate above 50 percent and the capital gains rate at 30 percent. Not the way to get the economy moving again.

The Democrats are in much stronger position in the House than the Senate, but the big question is whether the moderate Blue Dog Democrats will be able to get behind such a massive expansion of government.

UPDATE: The CBO has put a pricetag of the bill at $1 trillion over, but has cautioned that this does not represent an analysis of the entire bill and is subject to change once it evaluates the language of the most recent draft. Specifically, it pegs the cost of the Medicaid expansion at $438 billion and of the subsidies at $773 billion. But as Michelle Malkin notes, the bill doesn't fully kick in for five years.

View all comments (5) | Leave a comment

sre| 7.14.09 @ 4:31PM

OK, start here. Then add the elimination of the FICA ceiling. Expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Increases to pay for the non-stimulus deficit. Increases to cover the shortfall when this tax doesn't begin to cover the real deficits that come from this gross expansion of health care. Increases to deal with the coming Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid deficit.

Now remember that people in this tax bracket are phased out of every tax credit, get no college financial aid, and face increasing costs of employment in the businesses they own.

After taxes/subsidies/spreading the wealth around, those earning $100,000 and those earning $400,000 will be netting about the same.

Oh, and when grandma needs a new knee/lung/heart/kidney etc., she can pretty much forget it because Big Brother will have determined that wouldn't be a judicious use of Medicare funding.

Did people really vote for this?

Fred Ward| 7.15.09 @ 3:31AM

Yes, people did vote for this because they voted for the people that are pushing for it to happen. We need to start thinking when we put our votes down instead of wondering why the world is going down the tubes after the fact when we helped make this mess by giving power to those who wish to destroy us as a country.

Pingback| 7.15.09 @ 8:55AM

Health care reality… « Time for Thorns links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Like Philip Klein,   I haven’t read the thousand-plus pages of the health reform bill Waxman hailed like a proud father Tuesday,  but he  hit the summary and the tax provisions,  and the news is grim.  CBO’s numbers register it as a massive tax increase over 10 years,  but as Michelle Malkin notes,   it’s more like a 5-year estimate since the plan doesn’t hit top end  until…

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More Blog Posts by Philip Klein

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/07/14/house-dems-propose-massive-tax
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