A Quote by Michael C. Burgess
In a system where the cost of care is hidden by taxes levied on your income, property, and business activities, it is no wonder why so many Americans rely on Medicaid to pay their long term care.
Related Quotes
Politicians like to talk about the income tax when they talk about overtaxing the rich, but the income tax is just one part of the total tax system. There are sales taxes, Medicare taxes, social security taxes, unemployment taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes - and when you add up all of those taxes [many of which are quite regressive], and then you look at how they affect the rich and the poor, you essentially end up with a system in which the best off 20 percent of Americans pay one percentage point more of their income than the worst off 20 percent of Americans.
You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes.
One thing governors feel, Democrats and Republicans alike, is that we have a health care system that, if you're on Medicaid, you have unlimited access to health care, at unlimited levels, at no cost. No wonder it's running away.
The bad things the U.S. health care system are that our financing of health care is really a moral morass in the sense that it signals to the doctors that human beings have different values depending on their income status. For example, in New Jersey, the Medicaid program pays a pediatrician $30 to see a poor child on Medicaid. But the same legislators, through their commercial insurance, pay the same pediatrician $100 to $120 to see their child. How do physicians react to it? If you phone around practices in Princeton, Plainsboro, Hamilton - none of them would see Medicaid kids.
Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase.
As more and more Americans own shares of stock, more and more Americans understand that taxing businesses is taxing them. Regulating businesses is taxing them. They ought to be thinking long-term about their ownership, not just their income, and that they should pay taxes on capital, as well as taxes on labor.
What Americans desperately need is a way to transition from the current system - which is fragmented and focuses on high-cost, high-tech interventions after illness strikes - to a modern system that delivers coordinated, high-touch, lower-cost, patient-centered care with an emphasis on primary care and prevention.
If you take your kid in for the sniffles, you pay $20, but the full cost is $200. And so we need to get back to the price system where you see the full cost of health care, and then people will make smarter decisions. That will reduce health care costs, and it's a huge part of our economy.
Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine.
I think it's important, especially in health care, to take this step by step, whether it's the replacement of the Affordable Care Act, how we make Medicaid work better, how we save Medicare for the long term.
When you say the tax system benefits the rich, there are a lot of people who respond, "That can't be true, look at the rate of tax. The people who are rich pay a higher rate than you or I." Well, yeah, but if you don't have to pay taxes on a lot of your income, then your real tax rate is a lot lower. And if you're allowed to pay your taxes thirty years from now instead of today then you're a lot better off. People need to have a sophisticated understanding of how the system works to appreciate that the posted tax rate really has very little to do with the taxes people pay.
Between income taxes and employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, corporate taxes, property taxes, Social Security taxes, we're being taxed to death.
By the standards of honest, if unorthodox, accounting, government workers don't pay taxes, but are paid out of taxes. In other words, they pay taxes out of money confiscated from taxpayers, who, in turn, pay taxes twice: on their own income and on the income of members of the bureaucracy. At the very least, this should disqualify state workers from voting.
Recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters - especially of course seniors (who might well 'believe they are entitled to heath care,' a position Romney agrees with), as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they're not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him.
We have a nation where the elite thinks it's OK to advocate a war and send the lower-income people to do the fighting. It's natural for such a people to think that the lower-income people should also have a worse health care experience. And the other countries are not there - I always say, not there yet. I tell the Germans and the Swiss, "You're not there yet, but if you're not very, very careful, if we Americans come over there and rearrange ... your health care system, you will be just like us."
You're entitled to Medicaid regardless of your income. Don't worry about your health care.
Related Authors
Alexander Hamilton Quotes
American
Politician
Benjamin Franklin Quotes
American
Politician
Bernie Sanders Quotes
American
Politician
David Brooks Quotes
American
Politician
Hillary Clinton Quotes
American
Politician
Jill Stein Quotes
American
Politician
John F. Kerry Quotes
American
Politician
John McCain Quotes
American
Politician
Marco Rubio Quotes
American
Politician
Mitt Romney Quotes
American
Politician
Narendra Modi Quotes
Indian
Politician
Newt Gingrich Quotes
American
Politician
Paul Ryan Quotes
American
Politician
Rand Paul Quotes
American
Politician
Ron Paul Quotes
American
Politician
Ted Cruz Quotes
American
Politician