Of course, for those of us whose primary income comes from investments, a paycheck analysis doesn't work.
But the conclusions are *still* true -- only worse.
* Without employer-sponsored health insurance, my health insurance costs are even *higher* than average. In fact, my health care costs amount to more than my federal + state tax bill, every year. If I added in Elizabeth's health care costs, it would be even more extreme (luckily, she can get government assistance in New York -- before that I was paying the bills out of my pocket, an enormous and unsustainable expense).
* I end up paying the AMT most years. The extraordinary amount of my time and energy spent filling out those overly complicated extra forms must be worth something, no? If the *ordinary* federal tax was raised to cost me the same amount or slightly more, I'd still benefit just due to the paperwork elimination. I get hit by several other tax code gimmicks -- I would gladly pay a higher nominal rate than have to deal with this crap.
A *doubling* of the federal income tax which gave free health care to me and Bitsy would be a net gain for me. And I'm in the top *5%* by income, and am not hit by the regressive Social Security tax.
Of course, the current income tax system is cleverly set up to give the best deal to people with over a million dollars a year in income. :-P
-- I remember reading that the cost of national health coverage for everyone in the country was in the $30 billion range -- while the cost of insurance company paperwork which could be eliminated by establishing a national health plan like Canada's was on the order of $300 billion. Win-win -- except for the insurance companies, whose interests are now opposed to that of essentially everyone else in the country.
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Indeed.
Date: 2004-02-06 01:35 am (UTC)But the conclusions are *still* true -- only worse.
* Without employer-sponsored health insurance, my health insurance costs are even *higher* than average. In fact, my health care costs amount to more than my federal + state tax bill, every year. If I added in Elizabeth's health care costs, it would be even more extreme (luckily, she can get government assistance in New York -- before that I was paying the bills out of my pocket, an enormous and unsustainable expense).
* I end up paying the AMT most years. The extraordinary amount of my time and energy spent filling out those overly complicated extra forms must be worth something, no? If the *ordinary* federal tax was raised to cost me the same amount or slightly more, I'd still benefit just due to the paperwork elimination. I get hit by several other tax code gimmicks -- I would gladly pay a higher nominal rate than have to deal with this crap.
A *doubling* of the federal income tax which gave free health care to me and Bitsy would be a net gain for me. And I'm in the top *5%* by income, and am not hit by the regressive Social Security tax.
Of course, the current income tax system is cleverly set up to give the best deal to people with over a million dollars a year in income. :-P
--
I remember reading that the cost of national health coverage for everyone in the country was in the $30 billion range -- while the cost of insurance company paperwork which could be eliminated by establishing a national health plan like Canada's was on the order of $300 billion. Win-win -- except for the insurance companies, whose interests are now opposed to that of essentially everyone else in the country.
--Nathanael