Speaking today on NBC’s “Face the Nation”, Congressman Charlie Rangel said that significant tax increases will be required to fund the health care proposal currently being debated within the halls of Congress.
Can national health care be accomplished without significantly raising taxes, asked “Face the Nation” guest host Harry Smith.
“Well, no,” remarked Rangel. “It’s the question of how much savings that we do have. And we were able to raise $500 billion by savings in the Medicaid and Medicare system. And we raised $500 billion in taxes. And we had to do this in order to reach the course of the bill.
“But how much money you have to raise depends on how much savings you had. And so there are certain things that the Congressional Budget Office didn’t score, savings that we have, with people not getting sick, preventive care, people not having to be readmitted to the hospital, and a variety of things that is just a question of which assumptions are you using.”
Republican Orrin Hatch attacked the idea of taxing the rich to fund government-run health care. “Well, if you tax the rich, that means that you’re going to push small business into a 45.7 percent top tax rate, which is like — like 10 percent more than corporations pay. And it’s going to kill a lot of jobs, a lot of opportunities.
“I don’t follow why we’ve got to spend another $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, most people estimate, on top of the $2.5 trillion we’re already spending in this country and yet still have, under one estimate, at least 33 million people without health insurance.”
Read the entire “Face the Nation” transcript for July 19th.
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