HCR -- The 100% Estate Tax

By John Ballard

Posting at the Health Care Blog, Merrill Goozner describes Congressman Ryan's plan to kill Medicare.

Merrill Goozner has been writing about economics and health care for many years. The former chief economics correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, Merrill has written for a long list of publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The American Prospect and The Washington Post. You can read more pieces by Merrill at GoozNews, where this post first appeared.

So here�s the real argument young and middle-aged people need to hear, and the real reason why the �more skin in the game� argument can never work for seniors or other vulnerable populations, including them when they reach that age. Seniors and the poor account for over half of health care spending. Within those groups, 5 percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of health care costs; and 20 percent of the population accounts for about 80 percent. These costs come for the most part at times when economic incentives have no influence at all on medical decision-making: in medical crises; in treating chronic conditions; and, for most Medicare patients, in the last six months of life.

That�s why a voucher program for Medicare, which will shift an increasing share of those inevitable costs onto the elderly themselves, can fairly be categorized as a 100 percent estate tax or death tax. People under 55 need to know that if the plan crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan were passed, most of them will never have a cent to leave to their children. It will all go to the health care industry to support the American way of dying.

More at the link, with a few comments.
Read it again.
Tell your friends.
Pass the word
Surely this madness must stop.

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The first comment includes this:

Rep. Ryan�s plan is proposing that during those times you mention, or planning ahead for those times, poor and elderly people should passively commit suicide, if they want to leave anything in their estate, assuming there is even an estate anywhere in sight, which for most there won�t be.

In essence, patients will be �empowered� to conduct their own personal �death panels�, with no intervention from �government bureaucrats�, unless they have tons of money, of course, which exempts you from both patient �empowerment� and paying taxes.

Another commenter added this...

And let�s add, always, the question of regressivity and progressivity. The poor already leave little to their children, and the wealthy are buying politicians to ensure that they can create a new landed aristocracy that spans generations. But middle class individuals with perhaps a house or some other assets will be forced spend down to zero� at which point they will die.

Of course analyzed politically this attack on the middle-class and upper middle class�s prospects for passing on a small inheritance to children may not look too alarming to lower middle class and impoverished Americans who have never had that ability, and that is reflected in the Tea Party constituency� lower-middle class dupes chanting slogans crafted by extremely wealthy propagandists.

But the analysis is sound and it reflects the far-gone state of American politics. It�s pincer politics� the middle class under attack from above, using the inchoate but deftly channeled frustrations and easily coopted feelings of the lower middle class. It�s more complicated than that, of course� but that�s not too far from the truth either.