I tried in vain to find a valid argument in this article. Instead, it was nearly wall-to-wall non sequiturs and faulty generalizations.<p>There's some arm waving about how increasing the income tax on high wage earners will act as a disincentive to angel investors. Am I misunderstanding tax law, or aren't capital gains (e.g., from startup investments) separate from income for tax purposes?<p>Then, when Obama's "socialized medicine" plan would actually help, the author rails against it because it has 'failed everywhere it's been tried.' (Except where it has succeeded. And also, the dismal failures mentioned are anecdotal scaremongering.) <i>The solution is held out in front of the author and he rejects it on unrelated, partisan grounds!</i><p>Maybe he makes sense to himself, but his oversimplifications haven't adequately made the case for the article title or his two supporting gripes.
This is simply ridiculous. The author clearly hasn't filled out IRS Form 1120S lately, or any other tax form that actually might be applicable to entrepreneurs. Furthermore, I don't really care if angel investors and venture capitalists have to pay more taxes on their successful investments. There's a difference between investing and inventing.<p>In regard to health care, adding more tax incentives (read loopholes), thereby increasing the complexity of the laws, and making the market for health insurance "more competitive," when the lack of competition is not the problem in the first place, will make matters far worse. Health care is not a commodity that lends itself to a market. It's a human right, which lends itself far better to [competent] government.<p>A while back I wrote about some of these issues here:<p><a href="http://www.aarongreenspan.com/essays/index.html?id=11" rel="nofollow">http://www.aarongreenspan.com/essays/index.html?id=11</a>
The person who wrote this article has never tried to obtain independent health insurance.<p>For a family of 4, private health insurance with a typical deductable costs something like $1200 <i>per month</i>. That's half a reasonable mortgage, or 3 times the monthly cost of two parents each commuting 50 miles a day on $4 gas, or 3 concurrent car lease payments. Over 60% of Americans today are covered by their employers, who in addition to accessing lower-rate group plans, cover some or all of this expense.<p>But that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that out of the 163,000,000 people that would need to switch to private health insurance in these schemes, a huge portion of them will be unable to access a competitive plan. Private health insurers can and do decline coverage for a myriad of reasons. My daughter had a (drug reaction) seizure when she was 3. NO COVERAGE. A friend's wife had a minor women's health issue. NO COVERAGE.<p>Advocates for private health insurance are quick to point out that they'll work with states to set up "last-resort" health insurance coverage for these people. Those advocates don't understand what the word "competition" means. Those "last-resort" plans already exist (at least in Illinois, Michigan, and California), but they're far more expensive than Blue Cross or United. Insurance works efficiently by creating pools of shared risk. What happens to the plans that get all the "risky" people?<p>With a couple obvious exceptions, my sense is that no country loves its health insurance system. Canadians bitch about theirs, British people bitch about theirs. But our system is an international joke. We pay more than everyone else, we shift the burden of those payments to the <i>least convenient</i> places in our economy, the average patient receives poorer care, and we still manage to bankrupt people with the system at random intervals.
Anyone truly believe that the change from "less taxes for people making < $250K (read: entrepreneurs)" and "if you create value we won't tax you on that" (read: successful entrepreneurs) is going to _dissuade_ anyone from trying?<p>This is the same "as long as you make the rich richer they'll spill some on everybody else" thinking that, frankly, has no actual merit in fact (Before you downmod me on this, lookup the some actual data!)<p>This guy should read a biography on Henry Ford.
I was wondering about this. When I first heard his tax plan I didn't think much one way or another. Then I thought, wait! I'm trying to raise money from the super rich!
Another point on the health care bit. At present, medicare and medicaid spend a combined > $600 billion and rising at <i>6%</i> annually. In their market (medical insurance) they are the largest players. Absolutely. As a result, other insurance companies structure their plans within those offered by these two entities. They have to, if they want to offer supplementary services to these large markets and have any influence with hospitals (hospitals and doctors do not want to work with multiple completely different systems of paperwork unless they have to).<p>If we want real innovation in the health care sector, the personal tax deduction will help but ultimately, we need to get rid of these two bloated freaks. Too bad that that is one sacred cow that no politician is going to touch with a 9 foot stick.