The Morality of Paying for Healthcare Insurance

For many of those supporting some sort of national health insurance program or other plan providing/requiring health insurance for everyone, it is a moral question. Making sure everyone has health care/health insurance is not a mere policy goal to be balanced against other things society might or should do. It must be done and it must be done now.

But that is not what the health insurance plan being proposed by the Democrats in the House of Representatives tells us. The plan supported by Speaker Pelosi provides for the insurance but the tax increases to pay for it are only on the rich. The House Democrats, or at least their liberal leaders, propose to raise $544 billion over ten years by imposing a surtax on those with an adjusted gross income over $350,000. The surtax would start at 1% and would rise in stages to 5.4% for those earning $1 million – with the initial rate rising to 2% in 2013.*

But if providing health insurance is a moral question, then the answer can’t be to make somebody else pay. There is no morality in saying we have to do it and you have to pay for it.

If making sure that everybody has health insurance is a moral question, then we all have to help pay for it. Maybe some would pay more. But we all have to pay. Otherwise it is just the cheap morality of making others do what you want done but are unwilling to pay for yourself.**

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* One assumes this surtax is in addition to the tax increase that President Obama proposed on the rich during the campaign when he suggested, basically, continuing the Bush tax cuts for those making under $250,000 but letting them expire for those making over that amount.

** If you think that the rich need to pay more taxes, as many liberal Democrats do, then raise their taxes. But don’t use that money to pay for healthcare insurance. Use the money to cover some of the rest of the deficits. There are certainly enough of them.