Does anyone know if this 400 billion dollar vote-buying scheme known as the prescription drug benefit is going to be means tested?
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by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Does anyone know if this 400 billion dollar vote-buying scheme known as the prescription drug benefit is going to be means tested?
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Brian
As it is currently written – NO. The richest senior citizens will. in effect, have their medications payed for by working class americans.
M. Scott Eiland
John, has it occurred to you that this line of argument is rather inconsistent with the argument that tax cuts for the upper brackets are reasonable given that they’re paying the lion’s share of the taxes? Medicare is funded by a straight tax on income that is not capped (unlike the tax for Social Security). IIRC, it’s a 1% tax, meaning that someone making (for example) $500,000 per year is paying $5K a year for an indefinite period of time for something they’re rather likely to never use? My guess is that this plan will be funded by jacking up the basic Medicare tax a bit, meaning that the rich will be paying even more for services that they are unlikely to be dependent on. The problem isn’t that the rich will be getting free Viagra on the dime of the factory worker–it’s that an all-too large portion of the electorate thinks that it is entitled to gold-plated healthcare courtesy of the federal government, cost be damned.