I think there is a first step to get us to universal healthcare that no one has talk about and yet is the ingredient that will get everyone on board.
People opposed to uni-healthcare always talk in terms of how much will this cost? how high will the my taxes go up? But the real question is how does the average person who has insurance recapture the money that is already being spent on their behalf.
I made a brief reference to this in a previous post about what I felt the first for step toward universal healthcare. Which after further research I found out a very similar bill was already in Congress. H.R. 676 is very close to what I was talking about. But there is one aspect to my steps that I thought was unique and I though might deserve a little extra discussion.
There should be changes made in the tax code that give serious tax advantages to companies that pass the saving from the cost of healthcare benefits back to employees as compensation (wages), which is taxed at it's normal rates. Companies are currently paying about five thousand dollars a year for a single employee more then ten thousand for an employee and his or her family.
One fact that there is no debate is that the US spends far more on healthcare then any other nation. So we do not need to think in terms of how much more are we going to spend or how much more will my taxes go up. The question is how do we redirect what is already being spent. If we consider that we're currently spending over 15% of our GDP which is over 13 [T]illion dollars on healthcare, of that a third being profits and administrative cost. There is more then enough room to say to everyone we are going to give you universal healthcare and a raise.