Even in America, where we do not have a national health care system, over half of our health-care spending is financed through tax dollars. Some background on Medicare financing, and taxes in general, is below.
http://www.kff.org/medicare/7305.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothecation
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
What would be most reasonable to hypothecate to fund health care? (Sorry, I missed the live points and pints.)
Hey John Thomas,
In efforts to create a progressively financed health care system, it would be most reasonable to put the tax on incomes (rather than institute a dedicated sales tax or something like that). It wouldn't necessarily need to be a hypothecated tax, although that would lend more transparency to the system. We did have an interesting discussion at the meeting as to whether hypothecated taxes actually end up being used for their stated use. In the case of the provider tax in MN it appears as though money that is supposed to go to ensuring health care access will actually be pulled into the general fund.
Make sure you don't miss out again - next meeting will be May 13!
-Anne
Luckily, Mr. Governor decided that we doctors & friends sent him too much hate mail to let the sick tax be used to balance the budget. Yeay!
Post a Comment