Health care attacks
I am a cardiologist in Machias, and many of my patients are concerned about how the Senate’s tax proposal will affect their insurance coverage.
Wealthy individuals and large corporations will experience the largest tax relief, while those making less than $75,000 per year will see an overall tax increase over the next 10 years.
To help pay for their proposal, Republican senators will repeal the individual mandate and eliminate popular tax deductions, including the medical deduction for patients with large medical expenses. The result will be devastating for the health of our communities.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that this proposal will increase insurance premiums 10 percent and cause 13 million people to lose their coverage. Over the next 10 years, Medicare and Medicaid could be cut by approximately $1.5 trillion after the Senate approved a budget plan in October.
This result will be to destabilize the insurance marketplaces and will undermine health care for seniors and low- and middle-income families. That’s why many physician groups and hospital associations oppose this bill. If passed, it will harm the most vulnerable of our citizens.
Not surprisingly, a recent Quinnipiac poll shows that most Americans believe that the Senate tax legislation benefits the wealthy at the expense of middle-class families and oppose it by a 2 to 1 margin.
The Senate will soon vote on this tax proposal. Before it is too late, please contact Collins’ office to share your view on this bill.
Gregory Lam
Kittery
Show how tax cuts trickle down
The House of Representatives passed a tax overhaul plan that adherents claim will boost prosperity for all by big tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans. The Senate will begin discussion of a similar bill this week.
Those of us clinging to the lower rungs of the prosperity ladder have doubts about the “trickle-down” economic assumptions on which these plans are based. There’s one simple way to put our fears to rest.
Borrowing from an idea put forward by the Communications Workers of America, let’s ask all employers who stand to profit from these tax cuts to tell us how they will use increased revenues to benefit their workers.
Will they give us a raise? More generous insurance benefits? Underwrite costs for education or college loan repayments? Provide affordable day care or assist with other child care expenses?
Tax plan proponents say their business cuts must be permanent, while tax advantages for the rest of us are temporary because businesses “have to plan ahead.” If business owners have plans to make up to their employees the small advantages they will lose if a tax plan like this becomes law, why not share them?
Let’s ask them to put their plans in writing and publicize them widely. This is one sure-fire way to build support for a tax plan about which many Americans remain deeply skeptical.
Lisa Feldman
Orono
Tax plan rehashes failed ideas
I have searched for common ground with Republican ideas because I am sick of the political strife. Even reading one’s party’s name causes a flush of adrenaline. Yet, the debt-raising Republican tax plan repeats the same slippery steps leading to a failure of moral choice.
In future years, screaming and moaning about the federal debt will resume and again we’ll hear that cuts must be made to programs the Republicans cleverly renamed “entitlements.” Medicare, VA Health and Social Security keep the remaining middle class from becoming poor, while Medicaid, WIC and SNAP keep the poor from death. Education at all levels keeps the U.S. competitive. Our broken and forgotten infrastructure aids small business, but its eventual consideration will only increase the debt.
Unjust taxation helped prompt our original revolution. Yet under the proposed tax plan, a person who earns $40,000 and pays $5,000 for state and local taxes cannot deduct those taxes and so pays federal taxes on the original $40,000. Taxed twice on the same income.
Good ideas for solving our financial woes abound. How about a fraction of a cent on stock trades when computers make thousands of trades per hour? Can’t Republicans be devoted to fresher ideas than decades-old trickle down that never worked? The Republican morality is based on “shouldn’t a person keep what he earns?” Yes, provided he pays his fair share toward a moral society.
Leslie Woods
Montville