Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Beware the So-Called Fair Tax

Do you believe the myth that your boss will raise your salary when the income tax is eliminated? Fat chance.

When "various federal [aviation] taxes expired, most airlines lifted prices by an amount equal to the customer’s savings." Read The New York Times, A Bonanza for Airlines as Taxes End.

The Health Care Industry Bottomline, the Reason Republi-CON Want to Repeal the New Health Care Law

UPDATE III: More proof that it's all about the health care industry bottomline.

"One of the nation’s largest providers of kidney dialysis deliberately wasted medicine in order to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in extra payments from Medicare, a former clinic nurse and a doctor are charging in a whistle-blower lawsuit." Read The New York Times, Lawsuit Says Drugs Were Wasted to Buoy Profit.


UPDATE II: Speaking of health care industry profits, "the nation’s bloated annual health-care tab would swell by more than $4 billion" after a company raised the price of a medicine from $20 to $1,500 per dose. Read the Washington Post, Critics slam cost of FDA-approved drug to prevent preterm births.


UPDATE: "In a world where the two parties' top priority on health care was providing answers for the uninsured and cost control, an argument over the best way to do health-care reform would be a very healthy thing. But that's not what we've got. We've got the Democratic Party, whose top priority is to try and solve our health-care problems and who've shown their commitment to that by moving steadily rightward over the last century in a bid to pick up Republican support for some sort of solution, and the Republican Party, whose top priority is that we shouldn't do whatever the Democrats are proposing and have proven their commitment to that by abandoning previously favored policy proposals as soon as the Democrats demonstrated any interest in adopting them."

Further prrof that Republi-CONs want to repeal the new law to protect health care industry profits.

"Opponents of the health law sometimes suggest that cutting costs would be easy, with common-sense ideas. Several writers -- David Wessel, most recently -- have recently explained why that's not so. " Read The New York Times, Wishful Thinking on Health Costs.

So why the push to repeal the new law -- as I noted in an earlier post, without reform the cost of health care is projected to rise about 75%. But to the health care industry those higher costs mean higher profits. And since half the people in the country cheat and get their health coverage courtesy of Uncle Sam, the taxpayers pay. This is the reason the health care industry opposed reform and want their Republi-con political lapdogs to repeal the new law.

Of course, it make no difference to Congress, you pay for their health care, which they gladly accept even while claiming to oppose 'socialized medicine.'

Can you say sucker.