Free Government funded healthcare for workers–but only some !

The Senate has now unveiled it's proposed National Health plan, one of the most despicable and shameful pieces of proposed legislation ever written. It will deprive many of the disadvantaged in our country, including most low-paid workers, of healthcare, Disability benefits and long term assisted-living. The savings for this depravation of the needy Will be used to fund tax cuts for those who already have more than they need. The bill is also intentionally deceptive because most of these draconian measures will be postponed until after the 2018 elections and some after the 2020 elections.

Under current law, which will remain unchanged, workers with good paying jobs get free healthcare paid for by the federal government. The government can pay for healthcare in two ways. First, it can collect taxes and use that revenue to pay for healthcare for citizens. The other method is the one that is used in connection with employee health care benefits. Those workers who receive healthcare from their employer do not pay tax on that compensation, which can easily be $15-$20,000 in benefits for a family. But, the employer gets to deduct the cost of that benefit from its revenues before taxation. Thus, the government, instead of collecting and paying, simply forgoes taxation on that source of revenue. That shortfall in tax revenue has to be made up somewhere. It could of course be offset by increasing taxes elsewhere but the Republicans consider that to be anathema. It is typically offset by cutting into things like school lunch programs, Operation Headstart, the Center for disease control, The State Department and the EPA. If that were not bad enough, this health bill will be followed by what the Republicans deceptively call" tax reform" which will largely consist of more tax cuts for those who don't need them.

We the people should be ashamed of ourselves. We elect representatives that would pass bills as reprehensible as the proposed healthcare bill and tax cut bill. We have elected as president an arrogant, incompetent, lying buffoon. Such a person should never make it even well into the primaries much less actually be elected.

There is something seriously wrong with us. We have become intellectually lazy, selfish ,thoughtless people who are susceptible to lies and bullshit. There is no reason to expect that to change.