Washblog

The taxes that the initiative if passed will reduce are state property taxes and the Business and Occupation tax, which is probably the single most idiotic way ever invented to tax businesses--on their gross, not their net incomes.  80% of businesses will have that tax eliminated.  You'd better believe that THAT will be noticeable.  Also, property tax bills are paid once or twice a year, and a 20% cut in a big lump sum is also quite noticeable.  These cuts don't benefit lower income people nearly as much, but they are sure the hell much harder to ignore.

The analogy to HCR is clear, I hope.  Sure, some people are benefiting now, but they are nowhere near as noticeable as the outrageous premium increases that have been inflicted on large numbers of people.  Following is a list of the mostly invisible people who have benefited.

*    Sick rich people.  Only 2000 out of 4 million have bothered to sign up for the high risk pool. Yes, Virginia, 10-20% less outrageously expensive is STILL outrageously expensive.
*    23-26 year olds whose parents can afford to insure them.   A larger group, to be sure, but plenty of people in that age group are left out.  Still, there are enough to help downgrade HCR from disaster to mere liability, which is a helpful political effect of this provision.
*    Children with pre-existing conditions.  This s a very small group, as kids are the healthiest demographic of all--the vast majority are never going to be seriously sick.
*    The people on Medicaid whose situation will not deteriorate because states are getting chunks of change that will keep their health care budgets from crashing.  But they aren't going to notice anything because they aren't the ones who get the money--state governments are.

Now, assuming that congress had been as politically aware as the authors of Initiative 1098, and that we were not going to end up with single payer this time around, what might they have done instead?  The simplest possible thing to have done would have been to expand Medicare, either by dropping the eligibility age to 60 or 55, or by taking a smaller slice of older people and adding a slice of the youngest adults.   The administrative apparatus is already in place--no waiting until 2014.   Lieberman was actually for this before he was against it.  Charge 4% of income for voluntary enrollment, and tell the teabag whackjobs to STFU and just not enroll if they don't want to.   This would have created a huge group of beneficiaries that would have been absolutely impossible to ignore.  Enrolling older people only would have the political advantage of directing major benefits to a demographic slice that has seen its unemployment rate go up by more than 300%, and which tends to supply much more reliable voters in off-year elections.  This would have been by far the smartest thing to do if we couldn't get single payer.  So why didn't they?