Regular readers here know that I have been pressing the case to significantly raise the dues paid by the people who have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in the past decade–an entirely disproportionate haul pocketed by the top one percent of the population. Well, a bit of that idea is starting to creep into the discussion on health care, so says The Wall Street Journal this morning:

Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) and others involved in talks on a health bill said Tuesday that the idea of taxing health benefits is unpopular with voters, though they stressed that it hasn’t been completely swept off the bargaining table.

Senate negotiators are considering a wider range of ways to pay for expanding health coverage, including President Barack Obama’s proposal to limit tax deductions for the wealthy and another proposal to impose an income surtax on the wealthy, people familiar with the matter said. [emphasis added]

   To be sure, I still find it amusing that people continue to stumble and fumble around trying to make the numbers work for the various "universal" health care provisions–yet still treat single-payer as a bastard child and refuse to take it seriously even though single-payer has none of the financing hurdles found with the proposals that are on the table. Pathetic.

   But, I’ll just pass on that issue for now because it’s nice to see, even in a very timid fashion, some bubbling up of the idea that we have plenty of money in the system if we are simply willing to toss off the foolish intellectual paralysis around what peoples’ dues should be to have a functioning society.