Obama Backtracks On Plan To Fund Health Care Plan

[wyldwolf]

Four months after he unrolled details on how he would fund his health care proposal, presidential hopeful Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL) has backtracked on his pledge to roll back part of President Bush's tax cuts, Obama's campaign said.

Obama had said that he would return the federal estate tax threshold to its 2001 level of $1 million. But he soon discovered that with inflation that $1 million wasn't the large amount of wealth it once was.

His plan drew objections from most of his fellow Democrats in Congress, especially members of the powerful Black Caucus who complained that the threshold would bar black small business owners and farmers from passing wealth along to their heirs.

But for many critics his change of policy was irrelevant anyway because some had viewed his identification of specific funding sources as nothing more than playing games with math anyway.

He had originally estimated that his health care plan would need $50 billion in funding and identified such things as restoring the estate tax, eliminating the tax cut for people earning more than $250,000 a year, raising tax rates on earned dividend and phasing out most corporate tax exemptions as raising enough money to cover that.

The pre-2001 level inheritance tax on estates was 55 percent of estates valued at $650,000 or higher. The current level is an estate isn't taxed unless its value is $3 million per person inheriting or $6 million per family. Various proposals have been made to set the amount of an estate at various levels with tax rates ranging from 15-30 percent.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008688700

[Trillo]

1. Not sure I fully understand what's going on here,

maybe I haven't had enough caffeine yet.

What I've never understood about ANY of the health care plans is why they would need ANY more money. We have the most expensive health care PER CITIZEN, in many cases nearing twice as expensive, as other industrialized countries.

So why are ANY of the candidates talking about NEEDING MORE MONEY to fund their health plan?

If it needs more money, it isn't fixing the basic problems.

[Lucinda]

2. Because their plans also cover those who cant afford to pay

[Trillo]

6. What's so difficult to understand about PER CITIZEN?

The cost estimates INCLUDE the uninsured, by definition: "per citizen."

This means that if the uninsured were not included, any only those with access to healthcare analyzed, U.S. healthcare costs would be even higher compared to other countries!

Edit to add: The word I chose was PER CITIZEN. I just looked at one of the studies and it uses the term PER CAPITA, which means "by heads."
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf#search=%22rankings%20nations%20healthcare%22

[oasis]

3. Obama may be inexperienced but he's savvy enough to know that he's

got to crank out a few proposals to feed to the masses. His rhetoric has taken him a long way so far.

His campaign wagon is largely fueled by such fumes.

[zulchzulu]

4. If some people hadn't voted for Bush's war, we'd have more money for healthcare

With the so-called "experience" that certain candidates have that gave them the infinite wisdom to vote for Bush's war that will cost us trillions of dollars and other damage to this country, we can see how the money to go toward universal health care is a difficult situation to find money for going to that cause.

We can thank those that voted for Bush's war for helping make it more difficult to spend money on our own country's needs.

[wyldwolf]

5. and if some would roll back Bush's tax cuts as promised... but hey...

...how will Obama fund his plan now?

[zulchzulu]

7. Obama is proving he is fiscally responsible and is looking correctly...

...for how to fund what we need to do.

He's doing this with no help from those that were suckered into voting for Bush's war and costing us taxpayers trillions and untold, unfathomable deaths and hell by the time it's all said and done.