Untitled Document
Look out, everyone — George W. Bush has had
another idea! The guy who told us that occupying Iraq would be a
really smart thing to do has now focused both of his brain cells on
healthcare in America. Here’s his plan: (1) The 47 million Americans
who have no health coverage will be offered tax deductions to buy
individual health policies from insurance corporations; (2) American
workers who do have good health policies will be taxed to help cover the
tax deductions for the poor. Gosh, so much ignorance in one little head! Bush, of
course, doesn’t know any poor people, so maybe he doesn’t
understand that they don’t have enough income to be able to use a tax
deduction. Then there’s the fact that poor folks tend to have a
number of health problems — and insurance corporations don’t
want to sell policies to people who might actually need to make insurance
claims. Therefore George’s scheme will do practically nothing to
reduce the number of Americans who lack coverage. It will, however, hurt middle-class families by
slapping a health tax on them. Wasn’t this the guy who pledged never
to increase taxes? So why hit ordinary workers with a levy that could cost
them a few thousand dollars each? Because, he sneered, these people have
chosen “overly expensive, gold-plated plans.”
Gold-plated? George, having decent health coverage is
not a royal luxury, not something that a president should mock, and
certainly not anything for you to be taxing. The good news is that George’s idea is going
nowhere — it’s opposed by business, labor, health advocates,
Democrats in Congress, and the general public. The bad news is that it
reveals just how out of touch and condescending our president is. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator,
columnist, and author.
This article appears in Feb 1-7, 2007.
