<JoeyDauben>
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Overview: Like it or not, we're all going to be paying for older folks to buy prescription drugs, much like what your parents do now (if you live in the U.S.).
The reason I'm doing this is to show you people what you can expect. I have a little chart and story, set for publication next week.
If you have any questions, feel free to reply with them. But just to let you know, we're all going to be hit hard.
(Younger people in general)
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Chart-HealthCare
Adding a Medicare drug benefit will cost $1,125 in new taxes per household by 2030
Funding the Medicare drug benefit shortfall would require raising individual income taxes by approximately 5 percent through 2030. Funding the combined shortfall of the drug benefit and the current Medicare program would require an 18 percent income tax increase
An 18 percent increase translates into raising the current income tax brackets of 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent by 7 to 9 percentage points each
The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program – a healthcare plan used by lawmakers such as Congressman Joe Barton, is driven by consumer choice and competition, and is the best model for reforming Medicare
Source: The Heritage Foundation
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Prescription drug benefit to push taxes up $16,000
Entitlement is $2 trillion tax increase
JOEY DAUBEN
The Ellis County Press
OVILLA – With the final phase of the Bush administration’s prescription drug benefit being hammered out in Congress, Corey Austin Bevers could soon see his additional tax burden jump 40 percent until he retires.
A steep price for the biggest entitlement proposal since LBJ’s Great Society programs, and for someone who hasn’t even been born yet.
But the added tax is what politicians and conservative economists target as the extra burden to pay for senior citizens’ drug coverage, a plan that secured much-needed support from a broad voter base, a plan heralded by Ellis County American Association for Retired Persons members.
With already-high drug prices seniors must pay, coupled with a stagnant economy, young people like Bevers, expected due date in November, would have to cough up additional money to pay for senior citizens living on prescription drugs.
“Lawmakers are voting for a $2 trillion tax increase,” said William Beach of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. “When the baby-boom generation enters Medicare and causes it to plunge deeper into the red, Congress will likely use deficit spending to fund the shortfall.”
Deficits, Beach reported in Heritage’s “The New Medicare Drug Entitlement’s Huge New Tax on Working Americans” presentation must be repaid through either taxes or fees.
Lawmakers “will likely resist massive increases in Medicare premiums, leaving the taxpayers to cover the $5 trillion shortfall, as well as the $2 trillion drug benefit.”
For a 40-year-old couple in Ellis County, for example, Beach said their total income tax increase would be a whopping $16,127 – on top of the already 15.3 percent payroll tax used to fund current Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries.
“Neither the payroll tax, the tax need to fund the current Medicare shortfall, nor the tax needed to fund a drug benefit – will be set aside for their own retirement,” Beach said.
And when Cory Bevers is old enough to pay taxes, employers will cut out another $1,125 just to pay for the unfunded portions of the drug benefit.
“Responsible lawmakers who oppose such substantial tax increases should look beyond the 2004 election and examine the burden that a Medicare drug burden will impose on future generations,” Beach said.
Congressman Joe Barton, who represents all of Ellis County, was one of hundreds of lawmakers to have voted for the plan.
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