Health reform via tax breaks

So....my last post was meant to shock and awe you. Not sure it accomplished much as no one seems to have posted anything. However, it was my goal to get you out of your seat and on the phone to your congressman/woman and tell them HELL NO regarding Cap and Trade and/or the Health Care bill. As of yesterday the Congress said it would not get to health care reform before the summer recess. HOORAY! OK enough celebrating. It's time to get active. Call you Congressman/woman and Senators and tell them stop the politics and start making sense. Without a doubt we need something done with health care. The government is the main culprit in rising costs so I have little expectation for them to solve the problem. In fact I would expect it to get worse because of their meddling. That was until last night. An idea came to me. I'm not sure if it makes sense or not to be completely honest. I was thinking about the health care problems we are facing as a nation. I'm not a bleeding heart but I don't think it's correct, moral, or fair for people to not have affordable health care. We hear about people who loose their health care because they become too expensive or they have a pre-existing condition. You'd have to be a complete cold hearted non-human to not feel sympathy for people in those situations. However, I do not agree with the current purposed fixes to those problems. I just can't see how they will help. I see more damage being done by the current formats of each of the bills. For example, one Democrat bill actually states that IF you decide to leave a company and get self employeed you will be OBLIGED to sign up for the state run health care insurance and you won't EVER be able to switch to private health care. As someone who is self employeed that is a very scary concept. I will have no options.

Anyway, as I was saying, an idea came to me last night and I'm going to put it out there for all to critique. So here it is. We, as a nation, pay for "univeral health care" with a tax cut. WHAT!? I know I know....that doesn't make sense right? Wait for it....Wait for it....NOW....

1. Oblige all employeers to offer full medical and dental to it's employees.
2. Employeers as well as employees share the cost burden.
3. The split will never exceed 50/50 employee to employeer but can have the employeer taking a larger share so for example it could be 40/50
4. If employees do not like the health insurance plan or provider offered to them via their employeer they are not obliged to sign up for it.
5. Allow insurance providers tax incentives to create "pools" of people who are either self employeed or are employeed but do not care for the plan or provider being offered by their employeer.
6. HERE IS THE TAX BREAK IS MENTIONED.....All insurance and medical payments are completely tax deductible by both employeers and employees + 5%. This means for every $1.00 spent by your employer or by you for you health care insurance or for any health care costs you get to deduct $1.05 from you taxes at the end of the year.
7. The tax deduction can only be used to zero out your taxes. It can not get you a refund. So if you spent more money on health care than your total tax liability you can only claim deductions up to the point where you have no taxes to pay.

Here are some of the benefits from such a program:

1. No large beaucracy needs to be created or an existing one made larger. Because you make health care a tax issue it's handled though the already existing IRS. All you might have to do is one more mindless calculation on you yearly tax form.
2. You have complete freedom of choice allowing the market to create competitive programs.
3. The government is not competing with private industry.
4. Cut the waste. Under a government run program you would pay taxes to the government for health care they would provide to you. We all know how that will work but in addition it's like paying someone to pay you. Which makes no sense at all.
5. It removes all politics from the disussion.
6. It creates jobs. More people getting affordable health care equals more jobs. By the way it's private sector jobs that are being created.

Let me know what you think.