Why I Don't Totally Like Democracy

Why I Don't Totally Like Democracy


I guess I am too left brained to like the messy way our legislation is created.  Take the ACA (the affordable health care act) for example.  If we as a people decide that providing care to the uninsured is a reasonable thing to do, then the legislation should be straight forward.  Clearly, if we are going to spend more money, then revenue must be raised.  Someone must pay this revenue.  This revenue should be called a tax, and who is paying this tax should be clear.  None of this transparency was present in this act.

For starters, despite all talk to the contrary, the act was not funded.  Remember all that talk about how the deficit would actually decrease.  Nearly half of the "funding" was a savings in expected expense for Medicare advantage. Now, as we all know, Medicare is grossly underfunded, and any "savings" in that program should be applied to future expenditures to lengthen the program's viability.  Spending money you don't have isn't exactly "paying" for a new program.

Secondly, the fact that money raised for the program was actually a tax was obfuscated.  Individual mandates, or any mandates were in fact taxes.  This deception was clearly intentional to blunt opposition.  The supreme court called the administration out on this in ruling in favor of the ACA.

Thirdly, the incidence of the taxes were obscured. Who is really paying?   People who like to tan? People that have too fancy of a health care policy? People that don't buy insurance?  Medical manufacturer's or the people who use their products?  People that earn a high income?  Maybe none of these as exceptions keep coming up. 

My proposal would have been to simply estimate the cost and add it as a surcharge to the income tax at all levels, then everyone would know their share.  We could judge as a society whether the benefit of this program was "affordable". It is a shame that in order to pass legislation we have to disguise the facts we need to make an informed choice.