The Respectfully Republican Conversation

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/medicaideligibility/

My hard core Democratic friends this weekend, in talking about the McCain insurance plan, told me Consumer Reports compared plans with two different couples- both couples had one member that had preexisting health problems.  In both instances McCain's plan was the better plan for them.

It can be found in Consumer Reports - He is a Democrat to the core and will vote Obama but tell him you hope he is right about Obama and he won't answer you.  He is voting for him because he is a Democrat, not that he thinks he is the best person.  

Brenda

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I need to head out the door to work but if any of you have time, you may want to see if you can find this online.  I was watching one of the business channels yesterday and the Wall Street Journal had a piece yesterday on Obama's tax plan.

From the discussion that I heard on the plan - the Journal laid it all out - it showed Obama was giving credits for lots and lots of things - that those that don't pay any income tax would be getting tax refund checks in the mail.  Never pay any taxes but they get a tax refund check - the Journal called it re-distribution of wealth.

My DH said he was watching a speech by Obama yesterday, I didn't see this, and that Obama himself said "yes, it is re-distribution of wealth".  

That is what scares me - those that work - no matter our level of income and no matter that we struggle to pay our fair share of taxes - those that don't file taxes will be given tax refunds.  That goes against everything I was ever taught about Democracy. 

Anyway, the plan was laid out in the Wall Street Journal is what I heard on the program yesterday - wish I had time to check it out for everyone.   

Brenda

I didn't imagine what I heard or read about taxing medical benefits we receive from our employers as income.  I will provide more links.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/mccains_health_care_tax_hike.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/us/politics/01mccain.html

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/06/senator_mccains_new_tax_on_hea/

http://www.galen.org/component,8/action,show_content/id,68/category_id,0/blog_id,1095/type,33/

If a family is making $104K, and pays an additional $300 in taxes on the health insurance premiums, but also gets $5000 in tax credits to help pay for that health insurance, then they are ahead by $4700 the first year. 

If another family has that same$104K income, but doesn't have an employer funded health insurance policy, their taxes would stay the same, and they would get the $5000 credit to help them pay for their health insurance that they are currently going without, or paying for entirely out of pocket.  They would be ahead by $5000.  Even if that $5000 only buys a minimal policy, they could still have more/better coverage than they currently do.

As I said in my last post, the details of either plan will change significantly by the time it is implemented.  What we need to decide is do we want to use tax credits to help people pay for health care or do we want to start a government run health care system? 

Gals,

With the election a stones throw away .. I'm panicking.

I'm a dem.  But, why won't Obama release his thesis from college? 

I'm going back to my original fears when he was running against Hill in the primaries.  "Redistribution of wealth" is a phrase that worries me.  Hell, I loved Roosevelt and LBJ (don't beat me up!!)  But this makes me nervous.  Do you guys have any links to his studies at Harvard or what how his views on education coincided with Ayers on that educational committee or board they were on together.  I'm not talking about ACORN here.  That subject has been beat to death and there are lots of on-line links to it.  I am also rethinking how Michelle Obama seems to be repackaged lately.  And I am remembering her statements back in the primaries. 

My other concern is ... I just can't get past Palin.  Fine .. she's knows about energy in AK, but that's just not enough for me. 

I'm confused and trying to figure out if Obama's youthful associations were based on inexperience and zeal for change or some other type of philosophy.  I guess I need to do some research on Ayers on the Weather underground back in the 60's and 70's.  What can I say ... I was a freakin' flower child back then!!

Scott Shane, The New York Times

CHICAGO - At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

Twenty-six years later, at a luncheon meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama's first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.

Minimizing link?

Conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" and "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."

Federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges against Mr. Ayers were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct.

Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform.

In March 1995, Mr. Obama became chairman of a board that oversaw the distribution of Annenberg school reform grants in Chicago. Mr. Ayers helped lead an effort to secure those grants. Some bloggers have recently speculated that Mr. Ayers had engineered that post for him.

Played no role

In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama's appointment. Archives of the Chicago Annenberg project, which funneled the money to networks of schools from 1995 to 2000, show both men attended six board meetings early in the project - Mr. Obama as chairman, Mr. Ayers to brief members on school issues.

It was later in 1995 that Mr. Ayers hosted the gathering, in a townhouse three blocks from Mr. Obama's home, at which state Sen. Alice J. Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Mr. Obama to a few Democratic friends as her chosen successor. That was one of several such neighborhood events as Mr. Obama prepared to run, said A.J. Wolf, the 84-year-old emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel Synagogue, across the street from Mr. Obama's current house.

In addition, from 2000 to 2002, the two overlapped on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago charity that had supported Mr. Obama's first work as a community organizer in the 1980s. Charity officials said the board met about a dozen times in that period but declined to make public the minutes.

A board member at the time, R. Eden Martin, described both men as conscientious in examining proposed projects but could recall nothing remarkable about their dealings with each other. "You had people who were liberal and some who were pretty conservative, but we usually reached a consensus," Mr. Martin said of the panel.

Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship.

Mr. Obama's friends said that history is utterly irrelevant to judging the candidate, because Mr. Ayers was never a significant influence on him. Even some conservatives who know Mr. Obama said that if he was drawn to Ayers-style radicalism, he hid it well.

"I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert, when we were together at Harvard Law School," said Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Mr. Obama and served as associate White House counsel under President Bush. Mr. Berenson, who backs Sen. John McCain, called his schoolmate "a pragmatic liberal" whose moderation frustrated others at the law review whose views were much further to the left.

Scott Shane,

The New York Times

I posted some incorrect information on this thread yesterday, for which I apologize.  I hate the inevitable twisting of the truth that goes on in political campaigns, from the side I favor as well as the side I don't.  So, I am posting further information on the candidates' health care plans, which I also posted on my health care thread, to set the record straight.  Again, I don't come here to cause problems and I'm sorry if I confused anyone, besides myself!

Here is the post from my health care link: 

There have been many misunderstandings about the differences between McCain's and Obama's health plans, and I confess openly that I am one of those who helped the misunderstandings along.  Apologies for that!  I didn't like either plan but preferred Obama's, which I realize now I didn't fully understand.  Nor did I understand McCain's.

One reason for my misunderstanding of McCain's plan is because I trusted Biden's description of it during the VP debate--Biden's description would have led most listeners to assume that under McCain's plan employers and employees would lose tax benefits, and this is not the case.  Only the employee would lose the tax benefit but in its place, he or she would get a tax credit, which in most cases, except for the most expensive employee plans, would be greater than the lost benefit.  Employers would still keep their tax benefit and thus would have no incentive to drop health insurance beyond the usual incentive: to increase company profitability. (I can only hope that Biden was laboring under an equal misunderstanding and that his description of McCain's plan was not intended to deliberately mislead the listener.)

So in amends, I went looking for an unbiased description of their plans, which is not an easy task, and I found the following (pasted below). I believe it describes both plans fairly, the pros and cons, but without excessive detail.  My own initial conclusion hasn't changed, which is that neither plan solves the huge health insurance problem in this country and that only a single payer government-run plan will work.  Nonetheless, if I were still working, whether as an employee for a company that provides health insurance or as the owner of my own company, I believe that in self interest I would prefer McCain's plan over Obama's.  On a personal level, McCain's plan would have better served my pocketbook.  On a philosophical level, I prefer any plan that serves the entire community, even if I get a bit less in the end. Neither plan achieves that.

Again, sorry Rosemary for posting incorrect information on the Republican thread. 

McCain, Obama offer vastly different health care plans

WASHINGTON - Susana Espinoza of San Diego is a poster child for what's wrong with American health care.

The 45-year-old mother of two earns about $39,000 a year, but can't afford employer-based health coverage for herself and her sons. And she earns too much for her children to get coverage under Medicaid or California's state children's health-insurance program.

So in an unfortunate compromise that leaves her feeling guilty, Espinoza covers only herself through her job-based plan; her children go uninsured.

When her older son broke his arm playing flag football several years ago, Espinoza borrowed money from friends and took out costly payday loans to cover the $1,800 medical bill. More than three years later, "I'm still paying off the loans," she said.

Presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain think they have solutions to Espinoza's problem.

McCain, a Republican, would provide Espinoza with a $5,000 tax credit, which would help her buy coverage in the private market. Obama, a Democrat, would expand eligibility in government insurance programs for children and the poor and provide income-based subsidies to help her afford coverage.

Like most people, Espinoza knew little of either candidate's disparate plans to overhaul the nation's dysfunctional health-care system.

But that's likely to change in the coming months as the presidential race sharpens its focus on the policy differences that define and separate Obama and McCain.

Nowhere are those differences more striking than in health care.

Obama's proposed universal health-care plan embodies the long-held Democratic Party goal of covering the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance. Employers, insurers, individuals and the government all would have greater roles in assuring coverage through a number of proposals designed to close gaps in the system.

"It builds on the existing system and recognizes that we're not starting from scratch," said M. Gregg Bloche, health care adviser for Obama. "One can't impose sudden radical change on the system from the top down. There are real limitations to what can be accomplished centrally with respect to health care."

McCain's plan takes a different approach. It follows Republican orthodoxy of trying to make the private-insurance marketplace more affordable and competitive by radically altering the tax treatment of health-care benefits.

For years employers have been able to exclude the cost of health benefits from their employees' taxable incomes, but self-employed workers and those who buy private coverage don't have the same tax benefit. To level the playing field, McCain no longer would exempt employees' health benefits from income taxes. Instead, he'd provide refundable tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to help purchase private insurance.

"If you put $5,000 per family in America on the table, insurance companies ought to be able to figure out a product they can buy. That's something that happens in every other part of the economy. It ought to be able to happen in insurance too," Douglas Holtz-Eakin, chief policy adviser for McCain.

Money left over from insurance that costs less than the tax credit could be deposited into health savings accounts. To improve competition and choice, McCain also would allow insurance to be sold across state lines. His tax measure would generate about $3.6 trillion over 10 years, which would pay for the tax credits, making the entire proposal budget-neutral, Holtz-Eakin said. Some 20 million uninsured Americans would get coverage under the plan, Holtz-Eakin estimated.

Kenneth Thorpe, a noted health economist, put the figure at 5 million to 7 million people, because two-thirds of uninsured Americans would require higher tax credits to pay for family coverage, he said, which averages $12,000 a year - $4,500 for individuals.

At those prices, the credits likely could pay only for catastrophic coverage, said Mark Pauly, a health-care management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Holtz-Eakin said insurers would have to provide coverage that met certain standards, but no such standards have been worked out.

Critics say that McCain's plan will hasten the decline of the employer-based health system by steering younger, healthy people into the private market. Health economists applaud the proposal, however, because it would make the tax code more progressive by removing an exclusion that disproportionately benefits higher-income workers with more generous health plans. In fact, some higher income people with generous plans would end up with higher tax bills under McCain's proposal.

Under Obama's plan, children - but not adults - would be required to have health insurance. His plan to expand state children's health insurance programs and Medicaid probably would help Espinoza's children get coverage. Covering them through her employer's plan would cost another $300 a month, Espinoza said.

Obama's proposal also allows people who don't have insurance through their jobs and don't qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP to buy into plans that now are available for some federal employees.

Self-employed workers and small businesses that can't afford coverage for their employees also could join the plans. Premiums and co-pays would be charged, but federal subsidies would help low-income people.

To help make the search for affordable coverage easier, Obama calls for a national health-insurance exchange that would set coverage standards for participating insurers.

Instead of mandating coverage, Obama's plan bars any insurer in the exchange from denying coverage to anyone because of illness or pre-existing conditions. Applicants to the expanded federal programs also couldn't be denied coverage. Employers that don't offer coverage and don't help workers pay for their health care would have to contribute to the cost of covering the uninsured.

Bloche said Obama's proposal would cost $50 billion to $65 billion a year and would be financed by eliminating President Bush's tax cuts for people who earn more than $250,000, savings on Iraq war spending and a number of cost-saving health-care proposals.

Pauly of the Wharton school said Obama's plan probably would cost twice its projected amount because it assumed cost savings that "nobody's been able to demonstrate they can produce."

Obama's proposal is based loosely on the health plan adopted by Massachusetts and is similar to Hillary Clinton's plan. But unlike Clinton's proposal, Obama's has no mandate for adults to be covered.

That's problematic, because many people would wait until they're sick to seek coverage, which would drive premiums higher so that insurers wouldn't lose money, said Paul Ginsburg, the president of the Center for the Study of Health System Change.

Bloche said Obama hadn't closed the door on requiring adult coverage. But he said other options were available, such as automatically enrolling people in plans and giving them the option to withdraw. "Congress will ultimately decide," Bloche said.

Critics of McCain plan's worry that older, sicker Americans won't be able to get coverage in the private market. For these people, McCain proposes a guaranteed-access coverage plan that also would provide subsidies for low-income participants. While specifics of the plan haven't been worked out, Holtz-Eakin said the measure could require up to $10 billion a year in federal money.

What many health experts find most attractive about McCain's plan is the potential for containing health-care spending.

"I consider it the most important of his cost-containment ideas," Ginsburg said.

Much of the rise in health-care spending isn't due to increasing costs, but rather more use of services, tests and procedures stemming from more aggressive treatment.

"If that tax exclusion is no longer allowed and all I get is a tax credit for $5,000, well, maybe I'll decide a (cheaper) policy is all I need or all I can afford. I'll get less health insurance, which means I'm going to be paying more of the cost of care, and that is a cost-containment" mechanism," Ginsburg said.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle McCain's plan faces is its radical nature and the uncertainty that it creates.

"People fear losing the insurance they've got until they know what they can get is better," said Chris Jennings, Hillary Clinton's health-policy adviser. "I would suggest to you that this is going to be the problem with Senator McCain's policy."

A footnote: After hearing details of the Obama and McCain plans, Espinosa preferred the $5,000 tax credit that McCain offers.

Anne,

Not to worry, we all got a better understanding of at least one program.  Somewhere in between lies a good plan but I doubt we'll have the money for any plan unless they find ways to save money to fund it.  What worries me, with 60 Dems in the senate, anything can get through without much ado.  We will be held hostage to any thing they want to think up.  Thanks Pat, it' s good to know I'm included.

Bren,

Stanley Kurtz went to the library where they're storing CAC papers.  He was one of many to look them over, but pretty much the only one to write about what he found in those papers:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

McCain's economic package.  See what the Dems are saying.  Obama must hate retirees.  Anyone with plans of cashing in their 401k plans now want to kiss McCain.

McCain said President Bush's $250 billion plan to buy shares in the nation's leading banks - advance word of which helped stocks soar on Monday - should be short-term and last only until the institutions are reformed and put on a sound footing again.

"When that is accomplished," McCain said, "government will relinquish its interest in these private companies. We're going to get the government out of the business of bailouts and equity stakes and back in the business of responsible regulation."

More than 3.6 million Americans received unemployment benefits, according to the McCain campaign. If the government eliminated taxes on unemployment benefits, recipients would see an increase on average of nearly 10 percent, the campaign said.

McCain also called for cutting the tax rate on capital gains in half, down to 7.5 percent for two years. "This vital measure will promote buying, raise asset values, help companies and shore up the pension plans for workers and retirees," he said.

McCain proposed lowering the tax rate on Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k) plans to the lowest rate, 10 percent, on the first $50,000 withdrawn. The McCain campaign estimated it would affect 9 million people over the age of 60, but the biggest benefit would go to the highest income seniors.

"Sen. McCain also shows how little he understands the economy by offering lower capital gains rates in a year in which people don't have an awful lot of capital gains," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton responded. "His trickle-down, ideological recipes won't strengthen our economy and grow our middle-class." Burton added that the McCain plan provides "no tax relief at all to 101 million hardworking families, including 97 percent of senior citizens, and it does nothing to cut taxes for small businesses or give them access to credit."

Look who's calling the kettle in the above.  Obama does nothing to cut taxes for small business, am I reading that correctly from the Obama camp, they're critizing McCain when Obama is  GOING TO INCREASE TAXES on small business. 

Anyone see McCain's speech earlier today?  It was the best speech I've seen him give.  If he does that in the debate tomorrow and continues to be this fired up and on point with his message over the next couple of week, he'll convert a lot of the undecided voters.  He finally came out swinging and highlighted some of the inconsistencies and untruths about Obama's economic plan.  His example of the tax savings for a couple making $42K under his plan and under Obama's plan was great - that's something that should really hit home with a lot of voters and should certainly make them question what they've been hearing from Obama.  This could still be interesting.....!

Am I the only one who noticed this - yesterday the stock market went up - biggest one day gain ever. Then last night I read that the guy who won the Nobel prize in Economics and an Obama supporter and Paul Voelker (another Obama supporter) warned of a "deep recession" and of course the stock market today goes down. It is a well known fact that it benefits Obama if the economy is on the skids - of course until November 5th if he is elected suddenly things will start looking up again - he won't have to lift a finger.  Except for Belgium and the Netherlands, all other stock markets in Europe, Asia and Canada were up today anywhere from 0.06 to 10%. Hmmmm....

I do remember the questions about Bush's grades. Were they ever released? I really don't remember. Bren, the thing about world view as seen through the thesis would be good for a while. I would hate to be judged by what I wrote when I was in college (a hundred years ago!!)

Cherryl

Not until I see your college transcripts.

Cherryl

Geez Shokerooo ...

 Be nice to me.  I'm confused.  Besides, I just read the link over there (how do you do those arrows?) about Obama's thesis.  Plus, I have a stomachache. 

Don't make me leave ... I like it here .. just cause I'm a dem ... don't hate me!!  :-)