US wealthy should pay for health care overhaul, poll finds

US wealthy should pay for health care overhaul, poll finds; AP

Americans don’t want to shoulder the cost of President Obama’s health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.

That’s the finding from a new Associated Press poll, and it could be a boost for House Democrats, whose plan approved this month proposed taxing upper-income people to fund their sweeping remake of the medical system.

The survey, conducted by Stanford University with the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found survey participants sour on other ways of paying for the health overhaul. The options they don’t like include taxing insurers on the high-value coverage packages known as “Cadillac plans.’’

The Senate Finance Committee bill would tax health insurance plans costing more than $8,000 annually for individuals and $21,000 for families, although those numbers are expected to end up higher in majority leader Harry Reid’s bill. Union members are lined up against that approach because they fear their benefits could be hurt, and the poll found 56 percent of the public opposed and only 29 percent in favor.

Lawmakers also are looking at levying new taxes on insurance companies, drug companies, and medical device makers. But the only approach that drew majority support in the poll was a tax on upper-income Americans.

Comment: The basic approach is to tax the rich taking badly needed capital out of the economy, then taxing the insurance, medical and pharmaceutical companies, who will certainly pass on the costs to users (citizens) and the government (citizens again), so in the end every one becomes poorer.

Well not everyone. So who benefits? Well the Congress has more control over our lives as do the faceless bureaucrats in Washington. And of course the entire medical industry will benefit through the happy little fascist oligopoly. Yep, the few benefit on the backs of the many.

We'll see if the states grow a backbone as the oligarchs continue to wreck this country. Hey, who knows, they might even consider nullification on their way to repealing the 17th.