However, I have heard time and time again that workers who receive their health care through their employers do so at the expense of lower wages. If the price of food and water increases then the masses of workers will demand higher wages. If the price of health care increases would not the same occur? This is where reasonable and prudent people disagree on how much health care is a necessity and how much is a luxury.

Prospective payment mechanisms that purchase all the health care one can conceive verse insurance purchased for the ” just in case” scenario are two options that are appear to be at odds with one another. Individuals should purchase financial tools that protect them from large financial losses.

Federal and State legislators have mandated too many illnesses and benefits to financial mechanisms that were intended just to be insurance or for the just in case.

Finally, we do not need more taxes or more income into our already bloated and wasteful system. There is enough money existing in the sytem already. We just need a lot more efficiency. And since our doctors prescribe 90% of all health care here lies our solution or failure.

A sales tax would be progressive. The more money a family makes and spends, the more tax they would pay. This would spread the healthcare tax across the maximum number of people in proportion to their income who are going to pay for univeral healthcare one way or the other. You might as well know upfront your contribution to universal healthcare. If the Federal Government wants to pick-up some of this cost, the government could give you a tax deduction for a portion of this tax. I would prefer that each state administer a plan for its disadvantaged. I don’t believe that the Federal Government should take over our healthcare system for a number of reasons. However, a state healthcare sales tax would prevent any tax shifting from one state to give to another that Washington is known to do.

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Maybe “beneficiaries” would wake up to the real costs of health care when private sector stock dividends, insurance sales commissions, advertising dollars, and extravagant corporate compensation packages for staying and golden parachutes for leaving are all included in their health care bills.

Non-medical expenses are not the same as medical expenses. Should I repeat that? No one seems to be hearing…
NON-MEDICAL EXPENSES ARE NOT THE SAME AS MEDICAL EXPENSES.

And the millions funding political campaigns coming from lobbyists do not originate with lobbyists. Every dollar can be traces to someone’s insurance premium, which they foolishly imagines has something to do with their health.

Here’s an excellent analysis from the American Enterprise Institute for someone to study.

http://www.aei.org/outlook/21921

I would say AEI has respectable conservative credentials. I haven’t dig around at CATO but I bet someone over there would also find the idea of uncoupling insurance and taxes to be an attractive, If politically impossible idea.

Until we get there, I have no problem with the resource-guzzling tax for rich people you mentioned. When I learned that a fourth of the nation’s assets were under the control of the top one percent of the population I quit worrying about hurting either their feelings or their revenue streams. (The really obscene part is that most of that group likely pay no income taxes anyway, with lifestyles supported by tax-exempt sources and trusts. I wouldn’t know. I’m a product of the great unwashed.)

(Please excuse my thinly-veiled sarcasm. I’m still smarting over the latest Congressional Sausage product. It’s the fattest accumulation of quid pro quos of recent vintage.)