Smasharoo wrote:
Would you pay 5 percent higher taxes for national healthcare for all Americans?
It would depend on a lot of factors:
What is that 5% in relation to? The tax I already pay? Or is this an overall 5% increase in the total "personal" taxes collected, and we'll scale the amounts in some way? Or some other method?
It's easy to say "would you pay X amount more", but since this is a national healthcare plan, I have to assume this will increase taxes for everyone. If I and only I had to pay 5% more taxes and that would somehow magically pay for everyone in the US to get healthcare, then I'd be willing to bite that bullet for the good of mankind. I'm relatively certain you didn't mean it that way though.
Additionally, where's the future impact report? IE: Where did that 5% increase figure come from? Is that based on current health care costs? Some kind of projected need? Does it include all care that people might want? Or is it restricted to only proceedures currently being performed by HMOs and such? What guarantees do we have that once we institute a national healthcare plan that the actual cost per person for care wont skyrocket? If you don't think the mere fact that people are given "free" health care wont result in an increase in total health care costs per-person, you are very naive.
Can you guarantee me that in 10 years, we wont be paying closer to 20 or 15 percent of our income on average to pay for this?
I'd say that if you could guarantee all of that, I might go for it. However, I'm pretty much certain that those costs will go up, and the program will get larger and consume more of the "income" across the board over time. But then, that's why I'm an advocate for a free market instead of a socialist. It's not that I don't think free medical care for everyone wouldn't be a great idea. I just know that in the long run, the costs of the program, and the reductions in the quality of the medical care provided wont make it worthwhile.