Rudy Giuliani on health care, and a conservative's response

Rudy Giuliani offered "a consumer-oriented solution to the nation's health care woes that relies on giving individuals tax credits to purchase private insurance." (NYT)
His plan calls for $15,000 tax deduction for families to buy private health insurance, which sounds nice on the surface, but ... Here's a conservative response:

The problem with Rudy's plan as with the plans offered by the Democrats is that there is no requirement of personal responsibility by the participants in the plan. If you simply provide health insurance to the masses, many if not most will start visiting doctor's offices and ER's in droves expecting the insurance to foot the bill for everything. If that happens, then the already overburdened health care system will suffer even more and the costs will continue to rise.

It should be made clear from the beginning, "If you go to the doctor or ER with things like bug bites and colds, YOU will have to pay for it."

Any such insurance plans should be of a high deductible nature requiring the individual to take care of day to day expenses. Indeed the insurance should be more of a catastrophic coverage providing the person with a safety net in the event of calamity.

'Government cannot take care of you. You've got to take care of yourself,'' he said. ''As more of us do that, the cheaper it will become and the higher in quality it becomes.''

I agree with Rudy's statement. Now, making it happen is another matter.

Also, "un-insurable" people are not addressed by this. If someone gives them 15,000 dollars to buy insurance, it won't do a bit of good if they can't buy a policy. Older people with any health problems are pretty much out of luck unless they can get a group policy through an employer.

Edwards says he would MANDATE that people have health insurance. How thew heck is he going to enforce something like that?

Rudy's sound-bite for the evening news was (not verbatim), "Americans cannot depend on a "Nanny State" to take care of them. They must learn to take care of themselves." I agree with that statement. It comes down to personal responsibility, as usual. Rudy's plan sounds nice, but like most political plans, implementing it would require lots of debate and consideration for how it would actually affect Americans.

On Edwards and Obama's plans (NYT):

Employers would have to share the cost of insuring workers or pay into a public program.

Edwards estimates that his plan would cost $90 billion to $120 billion per year and would be financed by repealing President Bush's tax cuts on those making more than $200,000 per year.

Obama's plan calls for the creation of a public program similar to the health plan offered to federal employees, and a National Health Insurance Exchange for consumers to shop among private plans. Employers would have to share the cost of insuring workers.

Obama estimates his plan would cost $50 billion to $65 billion per year, paid for by letting Bush's tax cuts expire on those making more than $250,000 per year. (more)

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Comments

[GUYK]

The dim-a-crits as usual want business to pay for it...sounds to me like that the dim-a-crits flunked economics 101.

Any tax of any kind on business whether it be an environmental type tax, a health care mandate, payroll taxes, and even the taxes paid on profits are paid by the end consumer. All taxes are just part of the cost of doing business and added to the cost of the product.

[GUYK]

The dim-a-crits as usual want business to pay for it...sounds to me like that the dim-a-crits flunked economics 101.

Any tax of any kind on business whether it be an environmental type tax, a health care mandate, payroll taxes, and even the taxes paid on profits are paid by the end consumer. All taxes are just part of the cost of doing business and added to the cost of the product.

[Rastaman]

Firstly, it's not a $15,000 gift, it's a $15,000 deduction, It's $15,000 of income that people wouldn't have to pay taxes on, which would work out to about $4000 or so for the average person.

Secondly, almost no one would use the deduction to buy health insurance even if that was the only way they could get the deduction, because that's just how people are.

Then there will be all the health insurance scammers that will come out of the woodwork, selling great sounding and utterly worthless insurance and adding to the general disarray, such as we had over the S.S. drug plans.

The way to do this is to offer the deduction for health insurance purposes only and have a few pre-designated insurance carriers, approved by Congress, who insure designated areas of the U.S. That way, those who opt for it will all get the same deal, there will be no confusion, no scammers and no excuses for those who didn't sign on.

Rasta

[incognito]

That's a good idea Rastaman.

What about having businesses and employees share in the cost of health insurance.

Give businesses tax deductions specifically designated for employee health insurance. Then deduct the employees portion from their pay checks (which would then be used as a tax deduction from their annual federal taxes. That doesn't cover freelancers, however. Not sure what to do for them.

Thankfully, my Union pays for insurance if you work a certain amount of weeks per year. Used to be free but now we have to pay 100 per quarter. which is fine.