RSS Feed
A Simple Answer: Yes
Should wealthy Americans see their taxes stepped up by a modest 1 to 3 percent in order to help dramatically overhaul a health-care system that is torpedoing our economy and leaving tens of millions of our neighbors sick and scared?
The simple answer: yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Health reform must be one of the nation's top economic and social priorities. We have seen how all of us -- from our industries to our families -- have been hurt by fast-rising premiums and increasingly inadequate health care. But we must find a way to pay for the reform we desperately need.
A modest levy on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans is the most fair, equitable and sensible way to cover the costs. As this chart from The Atlantic shows, the effective tax rate for the nation's top 1 percent of income earners has dropped dramatically since the late-1990s, even as real wages for working people have stagnated or even fallen. Other potential funding ideas -- such as cutting the charitable deduction rate or taxing employer-sponsored health-care benefits -- could cause direct or indirect harm to low-income people at a time when they can least afford it.
Rep. Charles Rangel's (D-N.Y.) proposal will not, as some critics suggest, levy an undue or onerous burden on the nation's wealthiest people or be a "job-killer." It will simply bring wealthy Americans' taxes back to Clintonian levels - a time of great and shared national prosperity. It is time for the nation's wealthiest to forgo their out-sized gains of the Bush years and return to a time of a more reasonable and progressive tax structure -- and save countless lives in the process.
By
Angela Glover Blackwell
|
July 14, 2009; 9:39 AM ET
| Category:
Health Care Reform
Share This: 
Technorati
| Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
Previous: Who Pays for Whose Heath Care? |
Next: There Is No Easy Way to Greatness
Posted by: BRASH1 | July 21, 2009 2:36 PM
Report Offensive Comment
Basically we'd be restoring the rates that the wealthy were paying before the Bush tax cuts. They were rich before Bush's cuts so what would keep them from still being rich after their tax rates were restored to pre-Bush levels?
Posted by: browneri | July 20, 2009 4:03 PM
Report Offensive Comment
The comments to this entry are closed.
I live a frugal life. I earned my way. At one point the plan was to tax those with household income over $250K. THAT IS NOT WEALTHY. Furthermore, if you take from me I must take elsewhere. Which charity do you not want me to contribute to? Should it be United Way, Habitat, my church, that I give less to becuase my goverment decided to choose my "charity" for me.
Lastly, this plan has nothing to do with how health care gets delivered. No homeless person gets more or better coverage because they have coverage under this plan. No single parent with three children gets to the doctor any easier during the normal work day because now they have coverage.
This ia bad plan. Ill-formed and ready for disaster.