I fear for our country. Medicare has been one of the most successful programs in the history of our country. But, there is apparently a push to "curb the cost" (read: cut) Medicare, even though there is plenty of money to keep it robust–if our political leaders stop trying to appease the wrong people.
Here is the bad news (via The Wall Street Journal):
Democratic centrists said they won a tentative commitment from the White House to back a proposal to curb the growth of Medicare costs, as party leaders braced for a vote next week on health-care legislation.
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One proposal pushed both by President Barack Obama and some centrists is to give the executive branch the authority to implement cuts to Medicare spending that would be recommended by independent experts.
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After a more-than-two-hour meeting at the White House Tuesday, centrists said they secured a verbal commitment to add such a mechanism on Medicare cost-cutting to the House bill.
This is foolish and immoral. The problem with Medicare is not its costs. It is that wealthy people do not pay their fair share to sustain a program that has reduce poverty in American over the past decades by making sure our seniors have basic health care and are not bankrupted.
A totally different–and more moral–view is given by Citizen for Tax Justice:
The Medicare payroll tax is the one important tax we already have that is dedicated to funding health care, but it completely exempts wealthy investors whose income takes the form of capital gains, stock dividends, and interest.[emphasis added]
CTJ has a very simple proposal:
First, the individual portion of the Medicare tax (the 1.45 percent tax currently paid by employees) can be extended to cover unearned income (investment income) like capital gains and stock dividends in addition to earnings.
Second, the individual portion of the Medicare tax (which would now cover both earnings and investment income) can be made progressive by introducing a higher rate of 2.5 percent that applies to the earned and unearned income above $200,000 (or $250,000 for married couples).
Third, to prevent a tax increase on moderate-income seniors, the expanded Medicare tax can exempt the first $50,000 of investment income for seniors
(or $100,000 for married seniors).
The impact:
The proposal outlined here would raise $40.5 billion in revenue in 2011 and around $500 billion over a decade, without disproportionately impacting families that are currently struggling to obtain health care and other necessities.
If Congress enacted this proposal, most Americans would either see no tax increase at all or would see a tax increase of less than $100 a year. That’s because the proposal mainly targets unearned income (investment income), and the vast majority of investment income is received by the richest Americans.
As a result, over 64 percent of the total tax increase resulting from this proposal would be paid by the richest one percent of Americans,and over 80 percent would be paid by the richest five percent of Americans.
So, we have a choice. Make the immoral choice of soaking seniors at a time when the richest people in society are taking home trillions of dollars in pay and benefits and accumulating staggering wealth.
Or, someone can stand up and say: we have a moral obligation to protect seniors and the richest people in society, who have benefited from, among other things, the world that seniors have built and sustained for generations and left to those who now do so well, must pay their fair share to make sure we keep some semblance of a decent society.
It is a choice.
