Want to Make Health Care Work? Yeah. Right.

I think most people, even those with good health coverage, would like to see more access to health care in the United States. They don't, however, favor a single-payer mandate on healthcare for everyone. And you can see why when you read stuff like this, from Open Left:

Subsidizing the continuating of the privatized welfare state is just about the worst thing we can do, on health care, or things like pensions, etc.

Your logical frame for discussion of health care benefits is misleading, and incorrect I think. We exempt health care benefits from taxation, a relic of the WWII era labor unrest of wage-price problems, where companies could deal with wage restraints by creating these fringe benefits, as they came to be called. They're still compensation, no matter what way you slice it. There is a cash value to it that is essentially deferred or foregone income. We are not looking at potential taxation of health care benefits as a new tax, but instead the ending of an exemption.

Want to make health care work? Tax whatever companies are paying in health care benefits and watch them clamor for a publicly-funded program real quick.

Cost of Health Care X Rising Cost of Health Care +Taxation of Health Care = Companies Loving Universal, Single Payer Health Care Program.

Read the whole post at Open Left.

Image Credit: Doug Ross.

Hat Tip: Dan Collins.