NO, NO, No! Obama's so call "rich" people who make more than 250k a year are including many small business owners, prefessional, doctors and lawyers. They are the people who work hard and study hard.
Most of rich people I know, my friends, are not born in rich. they are the ones habitually working more than 60 hours a week. They go to school until they are close to 40 yrs old, got doctorate degree and getting paid well. They are the ones getting married late and having kids late because they have to sacrifice they personal life to be successful.
It's not fair to take their hard earned money and give to someone else. Unless you are the one that is waiting for the Free Meals.
whatandhow 发表评论于
It has been proven that communism has its reasons of existence. Even though rich people are paying the major part of the taxes, they also derived the resources that belong to mankind. They make profits by sacrificing other people's interests by polluting and destroy the nature. They not only have the right to make themselves richer, but also the obligations to pay back to the society. Money can make people greedy enough to make people do whatever they want senselessly.
jennifer123ee 发表评论于
Please sign your name!
http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/
jennifer123ee 发表评论于
回复紫萸香慢的评论:
Being a Canadian doesn't mean you understand the health care system there better than any of American, just like they are too many idiots American here too.
I know quiet a few canadian doctors who migrated to United States. They think universal health care system may work in Canada, but it sure will not work as well in America. For example, in Texas, 1/3 of population is black, 25% of population is hispanic, and who knows how many more illegals are here. Most of them are under-educated and heavily depend on governement support. In Cananda, people are better educated and not as lazy.
Our tax payers are paying for food stamps, wigs, medicaid and medicare of those people already, why should we pay more?
紫萸香慢 发表评论于
回复Mehaa的评论:
Can you please read the author's article more throughly? It's the author who mistakely critized Canada's medical system first. As a Canadian who knows more about our own system than some ignorant Americans, I feel like to tell the truth.
Leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone.
Our boarders are so close. Some of our people go to USA to get medical treatments and tons of American seniors have crossed the boarder to buy medicines in Canada. There are also Americans who don't have medical insurance coming here for treatments and we helped them.
Don't take me wrong. I actually like Mrs. Palin who is so funny and make me laugh so many times. If you think her so high, you must wish your children have her IQ and go to the same or simiar level of college she went, what's the name? North Idaho College? who knows where it is?
Mehaa 发表评论于
回复紫萸香慢的评论:
If you are a canadian, then mind your own business and leave us along. We people here know how to decide what we want or what we don't want at our home. The last thing we want is a lousy healthcare system like yours. If your system is so "good", your politicians or rich people wouldn't have come US for healthcare,period.
BTW, don't mock Sarah Palin like your loony liberal US friends here, they just love to hate Sarah, because Sarah scares the sh*t out of them. Is Sarah your nightmare too??? Yikes!!
mehaa 发表评论于
回复紫萸香慢的评论:
If you are a canadian, then mind your own business and leave us along. We people here know how to decide what we want or what we don't want at our home. The last thing we want is a lousy healthcare system like yours. If your system is so "good", your politicians or rich people wouldn't have come US for healthcare,period.
BTW, don't mock Sarah Palin like your loony liberal US friends here, they just love to hate Sarah, because Sarah scares the sh*t out them. Do Sarah is your nightmare too??? Yikes!!
紫萸香慢 发表评论于
回复noso的评论:
It's not true that the government to tell the patient when to see the doctors. You can see your family doctor any time and the family doctor refers you to see specialists if needed. Depending on the schdule of the specialists and surgeons, patients may have to go on a waiting list, but it's fair to everyone, only the ones in imediate life-critic conditions can get ahead on the list.
My friend with lung cancer got his chemo treatment pretty quick. Some cancer patients who can afford to pay private doctors go to USA or Europe to get quick treatments or treatments with advanced/newest technologies some of which are not availabe in Canada. I am not wrong to say that those patients must have some money because those special cancer centers in USA are very expensive and not every middle-class American can afford it. And lots of company medical insurance may not pay for this kind of treatment. But it's understandable to get better treatments if you have the money. The public medical system takes care of the basic medical needs of everybody, but not in the most advanced form.
If Canada were a 3-rd world contry, like you called it, and all 3rd-world contries were like Canada, what a wonderful world we would live in. No war, no hunger, no Wall street.
Yes, Canada is a third-world country, Hongkong is a small city and Russia is a tiny picture looked out from Sarah Palin's bedroom widnow. And God bless USA, ONLY USA.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:
"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."
What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.
With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left's expansion of the welfare state will be removed.
The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.
Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives.
It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.
not true. cancer patients from Canada who can't wait any longer for the government to tell them when to see doctor come to US to save their life. No just some people with money.
As a canadian, you should know the socialism practice in your country is the key factor that makes Canada a third-world country in a second-world country cloth.
All big canadian business are making money in the US, not in Canada.
noso 发表评论于
回复jennifer123ee的评论:
very good point, thanks.
noso 发表评论于
回复918918的评论:
thanks.
noso 发表评论于
回复gasbag的评论:
another misunderstanding case. Poor people has Medicaid from the Ferderal government and no hospital can reject any patient in life-threatening situation.
noso 发表评论于
回复westmont的评论:
I don't think you have any idea about US healthcare system. For the poor and elderly, the Federal government has Medicaid and Medicare program. Please get your facts streight.
紫萸香慢 发表评论于
我是加拿大人，我是小业主，我比平均加拿大人交更多的税，我们也替员工交一半的Extended health and dental plan, 我和家人很少需要看医生，但我支持我们的全民医疗保险。虽然加拿大的医疗制度有很多不足之处，比如浪费太多，但世上没有十全十美之事。在一个富裕的国家，应该让所有的人都有起码的医疗保险。换下自私的想法，这也减少了因无钱给自己和家人治病而铤而走险的案例吧。到美国去看病的，多是口袋里有些多余的钱的病人，因不想排队等专科治疗而去美国自己掏腰包看病，你也不用多替他们担心。
jennifer123ee 发表评论于
回复westmont的评论:
The problem is,Obama is so ambitions to get everything done (health care bill, enviornmental bill, education, carbon trade, etc) , not only the so call "rich people" has to pay more, everybody eventally has to pay more too.
the result is, bigger government, poor people. Geeze, that is just like chinese government.
everybody knows why health care cost has increase so much over last a few years: illegal immigrant! They are flooding in every major or minor hospitals in the states while we flipping the bills. oh no, they are the potential voters, Obama will only help them to get more health care coverage.
小鸿 发表评论于
i am sure that you are a republican. nothing new.
918918 发表评论于
totally agree with you. No competition, no motivation. 300K not rich, can't afford sending 2 kids to private schools.
jasondand 发表评论于
Democrats only know their lala land. Democrats are against team sports, for they assume it to be too violent. Democrats are against competition, for it seems too brutal. Maybe for those democrats, if they see any blood, i need to bring them some tissue, otherwise they will be sick and puke in front of me.
To one of the comments above. Democrats of 40 years old have no brains?! Have you watched Fox News? That is a mental hospital. All of them are retarded to the bones. Without Democrats, without liberals fighting for civil rights, you would not have any chance to come to this country and possess this "middle class" job.
hurry11 发表评论于
I agree with you.
mehaa 发表评论于
Dems: Do as I say, not as I do. They are usually very generous with other's money.
BO is nothing but a radical S.O.B.
"有医疗保险，是你的权力(RIGHT,here using entitlement may more accurate)还是你的责任(RESPONSIBILITY)，这才是关键。
noso 发表评论于
回复jjj7的评论:
exact my point. thanks.
noso 发表评论于
回复Pandabear的评论:
Thank you for sharing your story with us.
noso 发表评论于
回复janegsc的评论:
agree with you!
noso 发表评论于
回复zuncong的评论:
intersting point, can you explain more in detail?
jjj7 发表评论于
Support noso. Obama will lead US down in the long ran (in every aspect). We come from China (What's the main reason we left China?), we don't want US go that direction closer and closer.
Pandabear 发表评论于
very well said article! I really hope all Chinese people here in US can read it and know what really is going on here. We are losing our liberty and the government is taking over!!!
The problem with the health care system now is too much regulation. my husband is a cancel survivor and he is very against the new "health care reform". people need to wake up and stop this country from spinning out of control!
jasondand 发表评论于
左派就是一帮天真的，天天做在办公室的，只谈理想的傻蛋。
美国有句名言：“ when you are 20's and you ain't a democrat, you have no heart. But when you are 40's and you ain't a republican, you have no brain. "
janegsc 发表评论于
Agree 100%!
The sad thing in the US is that too many people can only see today and cannot see tomorrow, too many people believe in theory (which sounds good) even though this theory does not work in real like (look at Medicare & Medicaid!).
zuncong 发表评论于
在大多数情况下，民主制度不能保护个人的权利和财产，这个是常识，而且一再的发生。
Apricotseed 发表评论于
Everybody! Richs (so they call) pay for the bill, others paid for the quality of the service.
noso 发表评论于
回复ROUTARD的评论:
很有意思的观察。
ROUTARD 发表评论于
很多华人移民拜左派的政策站住脚， 然后就变成右派了。
noso 发表评论于
回复今夜很中国的评论:
I have just one question for him:
who is going to pay for all this?
今夜很中国 发表评论于
Testimony of Wendell Potter Philadelphia, PA
Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
June 24, 2009
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon.
My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick - all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.
I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand--or even to obtain--information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying for is enacted.
When I left my job as head of corporate communications for one of the country's largest insurers, I did not intend to go public as a former insider. However, it recently became abundantly clear to me that the industry's charm offensive--which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns--may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.
A few months after I joined the health insurer CIGNA Corp. in 1993, just as the last national health care reform debate was underway, the president of CIGNA's health care division was one of three industry executives who came here to assure members of Congress that they would help lawmakers pass meaningful reform. While they expressed concerns about some of President Clinton's proposals, they said they enthusiastically supported several specific goals.
Those goals included covering all Americans; eliminating underwriting practices like pre-existing condition exclusions and cherry-picking; the use of community rating; and the creation of a standard benefit plan. Had the industry followed through on its commitment to those goals, I wouldn't be here today.
Today we are hearing industry executives saying the same things and making the same assurances. This time, though, the industry is bigger, richer and stronger, and it has a much tighter grip on our health care system than ever before. In the 15 years since insurance companies killed the Clinton plan, the industry has consolidated to the point that it is now dominated by a cartel of large for-profit insurers.
The average family doesn't understand how Wall Street's dictates determine whether they will be offered coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much they'll be charged for it. But, in fact, Wall Street plays a powerful role. The top priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their stock. Stocks fluctuate based on companies' quarterly reports, which are discussed every three months in conference calls with investors and analysts. On these calls, Wall Street looks investors and analysts look for two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical ?benefit? ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.
To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going to medical costs is falling. Even very profitable companies can see sharp declines in stock prices moments after admitting they've failed to trim medical costs. I have seen an insurer's stock price fall 20 percent or more in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had to spend a slightly higher percentage of premiums on medical claims during the quarter than it did during a previous period. The smoking gun was the company's first-quarter medical loss ratio, which had increased from 77.9% to 79.4% a year later
To help meet Wall Street's relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls. One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment. Asked directly about this practice just last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers refused to end the practice of cancelling policies for sick enrollees. Why? Because dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line. Ten percent of the population accounts for two-thirds of all health care spending.(1) The Energy and Commerce Committee's investigation into three insurers found that they canceled the coverage of roughly 20,000 people in a five-year period, allowing the companies to avoid paying $300 million in claims.
They also dump small businesses whose employees' medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether - leaving workers uninsured. The practice is known in the industry as ?purging. The purging of less profitable accounts through intentionally unrealistic rate increases helps explain why the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees has fallen from 61 percent to 38 percent since 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. Once an insurer purges a business, there are often no other viable choices in the health insurance market because of rampant industry consolidation.
An account purge so eye-popping that it caught the attention of reporters occurred in October 2006 when CIGNA notified the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust that many of the Trust's members in California and New Jersey would have to pay more than some of them earned in a year if they wanted to continue their coverage. The rate increase CIGNA planned to implement, according to USA Today, would have meant that some family-plan premiums would exceed $44,000 a year. CIGNA gave the enrollees less than three months to pay the new premiums or go elsewhere.
Purging through pricing games is not limited to letting go of an isolated number of unprofitable accounts. It is endemic in the industry. For instance, between 1996 and 1999, Aetna initiated a series of company acquisitions and became the nation's largest health insurer with 21 million members. The company spent more than $20 million that it received in fees and premiums from customers to revamp its computer systems, enabling the company to ?identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts, as The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004.(2)
Armed with a stockpile of new information on policyholders, new management and a shift in strategy, in 2000, Aetna sharply raised premiums on less profitable accounts. Within a few years, Aetna lost 8 million covered lives due to strategic and other factors.
While strategically initiating these cost hikes, insurers have professed to be the victims of rising health costs while taking no responsibility for their share of America's health care affordability crisis. Yet, all the while, health-plan operating margins have increased as sick people are forced to scramble for insurance.
Unless required by state law, insurers often refuse to tell customers how much of their premiums are actually being paid out in claims. A Houston employer could not get that information until the Texas legislature passed a law a few years ago requiring insurers to disclose it. That Houston employer discovered that its insurer was demanding a 22 percent rate increase in 2006 even though it had paid out only 9 percent of the employer's premium dollars for care the year before.
It's little wonder that insurers try to hide information like that from its customers. Many people fall victim to these industry tactics, but the Houston employer might have known better - it was the Harris County Medical Society, the county doctors' association.
... A study conducted last year by Pricewaterhouse Coopers revealed just how successful the insurers' expense management and purging actions have been over the last decade in meeting Wall Street's expectations. The accounting firm found that the collective medical-loss ratios of the seven largest for-profit insurers fell from an average of 85.3 percent in 1998 to 81.6 percent in 2008. That translates into a difference of several billion dollars in favor of insurance company shareholders and executives and at the expense of health care providers and their patients.
There are many ways insurers keep their customers in the dark and purposely mislead them - especially now that insurers have started to aggressively market health plans that charge relatively low premiums for a new brand of policies that often offer only the illusion of comprehensive coverage.
An estimated 25 million Americans are now underinsured for two principle reasons. First, the high deductible plans many of them have been forced to accept - like I was forced to accept at CIGNA - require them to pay more out of their own pockets for medical care, whether they can afford it or not. The trend toward these high-deductible plans alarms many health care experts and state insurance commissioners. As California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi told the Associated Press in 2005 when he was serving as the state's insurance commissioner, the movement toward consumer-driven coverage will eventually result in a ?death spiral? for managed care plans. This will happen, he said, as consumer-driven plans ?cherry-pick? the youngest, healthiest and richest customers while forcing managed care plans to charge more to cover the sickest patients. The result, he predicted, will be more uninsured people.
In selling consumer-driven plans, insurers often try to persuade employers to go ?full replacement,? which means forcing all of their employees out of their current plans and into a consumer-driven plan. At least two of the biggest insurers have done just that, to the dismay of many employees who would have preferred to stay in their HMOs and PPOs. Those options were abruptly taken away from them.
Secondly, the number of uninsured people has increased as more have fallen victim to deceptive marketing practices and bought what essentially is fake insurance. The industry is insistent on being able to retain so-called ?benefit design flexibility so they can continue to market these kinds of often worthless policies. The big insurers have spent millions acquiring companies that specialize in what they call ?limited-benefit? plans. An example of such a plan is marketed by one of the big insurers under the name of Starbridge Select. Not only are the benefits extremely limited but the underwriting criteria established by the insurer essentially guarantee big profits. Pre-existing conditions are not covered during the first six months, and the employer must have an annual employee turnover rate of 70 percent or more, so most of the workers don't even stay on the payroll long enough to use their benefits. The average age of employees must not be higher than 40, and no more than 65 percent of the workforce can be female. Employers don't pay any of the premiums--the employees pay for everything. As Consumer Reports noted in May, many people who buy limited-benefit policies, which often provide little or no hospitalization, are misled by marketing materials and think they are buying more comprehensive care. In many cases it is not until they actually try to use the policies that they find out they will get little help from the insurer in paying the bills.
The lack of candor and transparency is not limited to sales and marketing. Notices that insurers are required to send to policyholders--those explanation-of-benefit documents that are supposed to explain how the insurance company calculated its payments to providers and how much is left for the policyholder to pay--are notoriously incomprehensible. Insurers know that policyholders are so baffled by those notices they usually just ignore them or throw them away. And that's exactly the point. If they were more understandable, more consumers might realize that they are being ripped off.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for beginning this conversation on transparency and for making this such a priority. S. 1050, your legislation to require insurance companies to be more honest and transparent in how they communicate with consumers, is essential. So, too, is S. 1278, the Consumers Choice Health Plan, which would create a strong public health insurance option as a benchmark in transparency and quality. Americans need and overwhelmingly support the option of obtaining coverage from a public plan. The industry and its backers are using fear tactics, as they did in 1994, to tar a transparent, publicly-accountable health care option as a ?government-run system. But what we have today, Mr. Chairman, is a Wall Street-run system that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care, and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it.
_____________________
1 Samuel Zuvekas and Joel Cohen, "Prescription Drugs And The Changing Concentration Of Health Care Expenditures," Health Affairs, 26 (1) (January/February 2007): 249-257.
2 "Behind Aetna's Turnaround: Small Steps to Pare Cost of Care," Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2004.
noso 发表评论于
回复moon1210的评论:
Thanks. FYI:
House Democrats on Tuesday rolled out a far-reaching $1.5 trillion plan that for the first time would make health care a right and a responsibility for all Americans, with medical providers, employers and the wealthiest picking up most of the tab.
The federal government would be responsible for ensuring that every person, regardless of income or the state of their health, has access to an affordable insurance plan. Individuals and employers would have new obligations to get coverage, or face hefty penalties.
Health care overhaul is President Barack Obama's top domestic priority, and his goal is to slow rising costs and provide coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured Americans.
Democratic leaders said they would push the measure through committee and toward a vote in the full House by month's end, while the pace of activity quickened on the other side of the Capitol.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wanted floor debate to begin a week from Monday. Other officials said that timetable was likely to slip. Even so, it underscored a renewed sense of urgency.
The House legislation unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats would slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid payments to medical providers. From big hospitals to solo physician practices, providers also would be held to account for quality care, not just ordering up tests and procedures. Insurance companies would be prohibited from denying coverage to the sick. The industry also would face stiff competition from a new government plan designed along the lines of Medicare.
The liberal-leaning plan lacked figures on total costs, but a House Democratic aide said the total bill would add up to about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private calculations. Most of the bill's costs come in the last five years after the 2012 presidential election.
The legislation calls for a 5.4 percent tax increase on individuals making more than $1 million a year, with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals. Employers who don't provide coverage would be hit with a penalty equal to 8 percent of workers' wages with an exemption for small businesses. Individuals who decline an offer of affordable coverage would pay 2.5 percent of their incomes as a penalty, up to the average cost of a health insurance plan.
With Obama pressing Congress to act on health care this summer, House leaders want to move their bill quickly through three committees and to a floor vote before the August congressional recess. But a group of moderate and conservative Democrats has withheld support, and no Republican votes are expected.
The House bill seemed unlikely to win broad backing in the Senate, where the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was expected to finish its version of the legislation Wednesday in what was looking to be a party-line vote. Another panel, the Senate Finance Committee, was striving to unveil a bill by the end of the week.
Standing before a banner that read "Quality Affordable Care for the Middle Class," Pelosi, D-Calif., called the moment "historic and transformative." The bill would provide "stability and peace of mind" by braking costs and guaranteeing coverage, she said.
"We are going to accomplish what many people felt wouldn't happen in our lifetime," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., one of the main sponsors. Obama, who issued a statement hailing the measure, plans to keep up the pressure on Congress by delivering remarks in the Rose Garden on Wednesday.
Speaking in Warren, Mich., where he was promoting new spending for community colleges, Obama anticipated a congressional confrontation over health care.
"There's going to be a major debate over the next three weeks," he said, deviating from his prepared text. "And don't be fooled by folks trying to scare you saying we can't change the health care system.We have no choice but to change the health care system because right now it's broken for too many Americans."
Separately, Obama spoke by telephone with Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican viewed as critical to the fate of bipartisan negotiations in the Senate.
House Democrats said the income tax increase in their bill would apply only to the top 1.2 percent of households, those who earn about one-quarter of all income. The wealthiest 4 percent of small business owners would be among them. The tax would start at 1 percent for couples making $350,000 and individuals earning $280,000, ramp up to 1.5 percent above $500,000 of income, and jump to 5.4 percent for those earning above $1 million.
The tax would raise an estimated $544 billion over 10 years.
Business groups and the insurance industry immediately assailed the legislation. In a letter to lawmakers, major business organizations branded the 1,000-page bill a job-killer. Its coverage mandate would automatically raise the cost of hiring a new worker, they said.
"Exempting some micro-businesses will not prevent this provision from killing many jobs," the letter said. "Congress should allow market forces and employer autonomy to determine what benefits employers provide, rather than deciding by fiat."
The business groups also warned that the U.S. health care system could be damaged by adding a government-run insurance plan and a federal council that would make some decisions on benefits, as called for in the legislation. Thirty-one organizations signed the letter, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable representing top corporate CEOs and the National Retail Federation.
The House bill would change the way individuals and many employers get health insurance. It would set up a new national purchasing pool, called an exchange. The exchange would offer a menu of plans, with different levels of coverage. A government plan would be among the options, and the exchange would eventually be open to most employers. Insurers say that combination would drive many of them out of business since the public plan would be able to offer lower premiums to virtually all Americans.
But backers of a public plan ? including Obama ? say it would provide healthy competition for the insurance industry.
Under the House bill, the government would provide subsidies to make coverage more affordable for households with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level, or $88,000 for a family of four and $43,000 for an individual. Medicaid ? the federal-state health program for the poor ? would be expanded to individuals and families up to 133 percent of the poverty line. About 17 million people would remain uninsured ? about 6 percent of the population ? and half of them would be illegal immigrants.
The legislation also would improve the Medicare prescription drug benefit by gradually reducing a coverage gap known as the 'doughnut hole.'
The individual and employer coverage requirements would raise about $192 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said.
Even before the bill was unveiled, the House Ways and Means Committee announced it would vote on the proposal beginning on Thursday. The panel is one of three that must act before the bill can go to the full House, probably later in the month.
Some House Democrats privately have expressed concern that they will be required to vote on higher taxes, only to learn later that the Senate does not intend to follow through with legislation of its own. That would leave rank-and-file House Democrats up for re-election next year in the uncomfortable position of having to explain their vote on a costly bill that never reached Obama's desk or became law.
by 2009 Associated Press.
moon1210 发表评论于
I totally agree, though I am not in that class yet..
