Paying for Health Care

The list of the options that the House Ways and Means Committee is weighing to pay for health care has been obtained by the Associated Press, and none of them is painless. They include a 10 cent a can tax on soda and "other sugary drinks," a "2 percent income tax increase to single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year and households earning more than $250,000" and "a new employer payroll tax could target 3 percent of employers' health care expenditures." Also on the table, the wire service reports, are "higher alcohol taxes, increases to the Medicare payroll tax and a value-added tax, a sort of national sales tax, of up to 1.5 percent or more." So much for the idea that the plan would pay for itself by encouraging preventive care and reducing defensive medicine.