A couple of timely debunkers for you today.
First up, here are the three big lies about taxation in America:
Lie Number 1) Poor people don’t pay taxes.
Lie number 2) The U.S. suffers from high taxes.
Lie number 3) U.S. corporations are over-taxed.
And here’s the truth of the matter, courtesy of Andrew Leonard at Salon.
Next, what about all those critics (Clearly NM among them) of Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare by turning it into a voucher program.
Poll after poll shows that the Ryan Medicare Plan is a loser.
The response from Ryan Plan proponents is that the critics are simply engaging in “scare tactics” — which they are branding as “Mediscare.”
Why does Mediscare work? Because, according to Matthew Ygleisas, the consequences of privatizing Medicare are scary:
…the key consequence of privatization would be a steep increase in the per unit cost of health care services. Medicare is able to use its semi-monopsony status to drive down prices. If privatized the cost of treating the typical 65 year-old would increase by around 40 percent. Paul Ryan’s version of privatization then “saves” a tiny bit of money for the taxpayer by simply paying a much smaller share of the now much-higher bill. Then he promises to save large sums of money over the long term by ensuring that the share of the higher bill that the government covers will shrink drastically over time. This shrinkage in the value of the government health care coupon either won’t occur (in which case all privatization will do is increase costs) or else it will occur (in which case over 100% of the savings will come from people going without health care services they need) and in either case the consequences are scary.
Some hard truths indeed for New Mexicans under the age of 55 who would be “covered” by the Ryan Medicare plan.
