Wealth and Healthcare

"The best solution [to funding healthcare] is for Congress to adopt the House proposal to slightly raise income taxes on couples with incomes above $1 million and individuals with incomes over $500,000 [...] Another progressive alternative is the Senate proposal to raise the Medicare payroll tax on income over $250,000 for married couples ($200,000 for individuals).

To make health care work and address the most vital needs of our nation, we need a fair tax plan. The funding fight over health care will set the stage for other battles in Congress, including over attempts by right-wing forces to cut back on the estate tax — the only tax mechanism in federal law to reverse the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Let’s hope increased taxes on the rich stay in the final health care bill and we get back to the principle in America that taxes should fall most heavily on those who can best afford to pay them."

Read the full article by Karen Scharff and Bob Cohen on Syracuse.com.

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neleini jerein commented 2019-08-26 07:20:14 -0400
To better understand the basis for geographic variation in hospital utilization, we drew upon both approaches. Counties and HRRs were disaggregated into their constituent ZIP codes and census tracts and examined the interrelationships between income, disability, and hospital utilization that were examined at both the regional and local levels, using statistical and geomapping tools. Our studies centered on the Milwaukee and Los Angeles HRRs, where per capita health care utilization has been greater than elsewhere in their states. We compared Milwaukee to other HRRs in Wisconsin and Los Angeles to the other populous counties of California and to a region in California of comparable size and diversity, stretching from San Francisco to Sacramento (termed “San-Framento”). When studied at the ZIP code level, we found steep, curvilinear relationships between lower income and both increased hospital utilization and increasing percentages of individuals reporting disabilities. These associations were also evident on geomaps.