One of his few good points, and it may be accidental is that it’s hard to sell a tax increase.
My health insurance premium is way higher than my Medicare tax, so I can recognize that tripling the Medicare tax in my income bracket in order to support Medicare for all will actually save me money.
But there are a lot of people who would stop at tripling the Medicare tax is bad. It would be a hard sell to get past that.
The only real problem with tripling the Medicare tax is that it’s a fixed percentage and is capped, but really ought to be progressive with no cap
This is why the idea of “Medicare for those who want it” seems appealing to me. Until you reach a certain threshold (say, 70%), make both the tax and benefits optional.
It’s not optimal by any stretch but it’s easier to sell it as an optional tax and benefit.
It’s one of those things that boggles me. People will happily hundreds of dollars a month for a ‘service’ they barely use and is notorious for finding ways to not honor providing the service for any number of reasons.
But the second you rephrase it as a tax, even a tax that would cost them less and provide them better services, they just don’t want any part of it and cling to the broken model like any kind of tax is an impediment of their rights.
One of his few good points, and it may be accidental is that it’s hard to sell a tax increase.
My health insurance premium is way higher than my Medicare tax, so I can recognize that tripling the Medicare tax in my income bracket in order to support Medicare for all will actually save me money.
But there are a lot of people who would stop at tripling the Medicare tax is bad. It would be a hard sell to get past that.
The only real problem with tripling the Medicare tax is that it’s a fixed percentage and is capped, but really ought to be progressive with no cap
This is why the idea of “Medicare for those who want it” seems appealing to me. Until you reach a certain threshold (say, 70%), make both the tax and benefits optional.
It’s not optimal by any stretch but it’s easier to sell it as an optional tax and benefit.
It’s one of those things that boggles me. People will happily hundreds of dollars a month for a ‘service’ they barely use and is notorious for finding ways to not honor providing the service for any number of reasons.
But the second you rephrase it as a tax, even a tax that would cost them less and provide them better services, they just don’t want any part of it and cling to the broken model like any kind of tax is an impediment of their rights.