Quick fact: Beck's "new little twist" is the same old health care jail time falsehood
Discussing Democratic health care reform, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that "if you don't play ball with them now, if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time."
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From the November 12 broadcast of Fox News' Glenn Beck:
BECK: But if you don't play by their new rules on health care, here's a new little twist. Have you heard this? You're going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail.
[Begin video clip]
SHOMARI STONE, KOMO 4 NEWS: If you don't buy health insurance, you go to jail? You didn't answer my question.
PELOSI: Well, the point, there is -- I think the legislation is very fair in this respect.
[End video clip]
BECK: When people like me had a problem with people coming across our border, taking jobs, going and flooding our hospitals taking our stuff, they didn't have a problem with that. But if you don't play ball with them now, if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time. And that of course was fair.
Fact: Penalty for failure to purchase insurance is a tax, not jail time.
As Media Matters noted, the reporter's question to Pelosi was based on a false talking point. Section 501 of the House health care reform bill provides that an individual must be "covered by acceptable coverage at all times." "Acceptable coverage" includes "qualified health benefits plan coverage," "grandfathered health insurance coverage," "Medicare," "Medicaid," coverage provided to members of the armed forces and their dependents, "coverage under the veteran's health care program," people who receive health care "through the Indian Health Service," or other coverage deemed acceptable by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If a person does not have acceptable health care coverage, Section 501 imposes a tax on that person "not to exceed the applicable national average premium"
Fact: Willful failure to pay taxes of any sort can result in civil or criminal penalties
A press release by Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) relying on a letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation states that "Americans who do not maintain 'acceptable health insurance coverage' and who choose not to pay the bill's new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years." That section of the letter dealing with "civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance" specifies that Camp asked the committee to "discuss the situation in which the taxpayer has chosen not to comply with individual mandate and not to pay the additional tax." Thus, the letter is not discussing the penalties for failure to buy insurance, but the penalties for both failing to buy insurance and failing to pay the tax. The committee's letter explains that the tax code provides penalties to prevent tax evasion of any sort: "The Code provides for both civil and criminal penalties to ensure complete and accurate reporting of tax liability and to discourage fraudulent attempts to defeat or evade tax." [Joint Committee on Taxation letter, 11/5/09]
It's a simple fact, Glenn.
The jail time comes in when one fails to pay taxes owed. If you don't pay taxes on income earned, or on stock sold, or on an early IRA distribution, or on the penalty one could be assessed for failing to purchase insurance, then you could be imprisoned for the failure to pay taxes owed. But you wouldn't be getting jailed for the reason you owed the taxes - it's the failure to pay the taxes that makes this a offense that one can be jailed for.
Seems rather simple. She is the speaker of the House. You would think she would know that question would be coming.
Maybe she didn't know the answer. Her name's on it, but maybe, she didn't read it.......Noooo, couldn't be that!
It's true that in a couple of years, all health insurance will be offered through a government administered 'exchange', but all that means is that they will all meet the same bare minimum levels of coverage, and will not be able to be canceled for things like pre-existing conditions. So, it will actually be better for most Americans than it is now. Not that Americans have ever been your primary consideration, except as viewer numbers affect your ability to negotiate for a larger paycheck. By the way, how does Daddy Murdoch feel about all the ad money you're costing him?
The Republican bill sure isn't a good thing. It doesn't bring down the cost curve, and it doesn't help with all the uninsured Americans. They help the insurance companies.
The Democratic bill helps with uninsured people, whether it's because they couldn't afford it or because they were denied due to caps or pre-existing conditions. They help with bring down the cost curve. They hurt the insurance companies.
Healthcare companies have taken advantage of their for-profit status to earn incredible profits. They deny coverage to individuals and for certain procedures.
I was comparing the Republican plan that helps the insurance companies (see the second paragraph) and the Democratic plan that hurts them (see the third paragraph). if you notice, in the two paragraphs, I compared the effects of the two plans pretty evenly. It will hurt them. But I am not gleeful about it. It's a fact.
In order to help all Americans, some are going to be 'hurt'. That's going to be healthcare companies. It will be companies, for example, that help administer Medicare Advantage, who will lose the profits they enjoy now because of a program instituted by Republicans who promised that Medicare Advantage would save money, but instead filled the pockets of those insurance companies!
But I have argued that it seems to me that I'd rather have a government official whose paycheck and whose bosses paychecks didn't depend on denying me coverage versus a for profit insurance bureaucrat making that same decision. The profit motive, regardless of the amount of that profit, skews the results. We know that. One insurance company in New York State decided to cancel a whole class of insurance coverage that covers many patients because they want to stop providing insurance coverage to one patient who has become too expensive for them to insure, in their view!
I think their profits are typically 5-6%.
Net profit margins -
Aetna - 3.85%
UnitiedHealth - 4.14%
TenetHealthcare - 2.63%
Now lets look at some companies in other sectors.
Microsoft - 24.93%
Apple - 14.97%
Google 20.96%
ExxonMobil - 8.98%
One more fact - The health insurance program as proposed will not be implimented until 2013, one year after the next Presidential election....hmmmm.
We've been talking about health care for hours and hours every single day on every single news channel for a year. In all that time almost nobody has even mentioned the fact that we pay double money. Nobody has told us where the extra money goes.
Using your words, "oscar the grouch", go research, THEN shoot off your mouth.
It comes from taxes. Other countries pay for the program through taxation. We will all be paying for it in the end.
Google "tax rates" and "countries" and look at the list. Just to compare apples to apples, the list below is based upon the tax rate for a married person with 2 kids.
USA - 11.9%
Canada 21.5%
UK - 27.1%
Sweden - 22.4%
Spain - 33.4%
Norway 29.6%
Netherlands - 29.1%
Italy - 35.2%
Germany - 35.7%
France - 41.7%
Take a look America, this is your future.
Countries with socialized medicine spend about $3000 annually per person through taxes. We spend about $7000 per person out of our own pockets.
Why is this the first time you've ever heard this? I'm betting it's because you watch the news. You'll never find it there.
I'll try a few more times. Taxes are included in health spending figures. Taxes are included in health spending figures. Taxes are included in health spending figures. Taxes are included in health spending figures.
Those arent health care spending figures that I am listing....those are the tax rates in those countries.
Sincerely,
The unteachable one
Who gets the $4000?
Health care quality is of course roughly the same across the board in advanced countries. We do better in some categories, we do worse in some categories, and the quality difference in any category is nowhere near compatible with the huge monetary disparity.
Those are incredible profits off what I believe what should be a human right in any developed nation like ours.
But we don't say that because you do an early withdrawl of IRA funds, you could be jailed, do we? Or if you earn money from a small business, do we say you could be jailed? Nope. Because it's not the method that causes taxes to be owed that makes you go to jail.
Nothing is being spun here.
But we don't say that because you do an early withdrawl of IRA funds, you could be jailed, do we? Money would be withheld for taxes if you do an early withdrawal. The way I see this is if I do not have insurance they will tax me extra, say 2%. What if I do not have that 2%? I know the last thing the IRS wants to do is send me to jail, then they will never get the money, but the fact remains that extra 2% that I have to pay that I am not paying, could wind up in the long run putting someone in jail. My employer is not going to withold that 2% unless I direct him to through extra withholding. MMFA is putting a spin on this, but not nearly as much as the wingnutz. As I said earlier, single payer resolves all of these kinds of issues, but the Dems were to scared to go for it.
And if you are really poor, or have other issues, there are hardship exemptions!
And what would put you in jail would be the failure to pay your full tax obligation, not the failure to buy insurance.
Taxes are a part of living in a society. You speak of welfare as though only the poor receive it. Think of oil companies. They receive entitlements as well. Right now, tens of thousands of Americans are fighting and dying to protect Exxon's right to sell you gas. That means that a percentage, a large percentage, of the defense budget ends up being corporate entitlement, doesn't it? I don't approve of that at all, so it's already happening.
No matter where you go on this earth, there will be a government there to tax you. You will not agree with all the taxes levied. In this country, you have the right to vote. A right protected by the very taxes you seem unwilling to pay. I suggest you exercise that right whenever you can, and make your wishes known.
I'm fully aware that just because the wealthy have money does not give the government justification for 'soaking' them. Where would you have the money come from? The poor? Perhaps we should let the less fortunate sell themselves into serfdom and then seize that money from them, all to add more wealth to the wealthy? I know that's what a silent but powerful faction of the most wealthy conservatives in this country actually favor, though they rarely say so out loud.
We currently pay more than twice per person what other countries in the first world do for health coverage, and we get poorer results despite that. Someone, somewhere, is getting fabulously wealthy at a cost of 45,000 dead Americans every year. The only real solution is, at the very least, a public option to provide non-profit competition. Much better would be a single payer system, but that is not practical at this time.
If Rush purchases health coverage to avoid the tax, then he's made his choice. He's wealthy enough to have a choice, and should count himself lucky in my opinion.
How about someone who did thirty years on an assembly line, and, as part of the standard retirement plan, got to keep their benefits? Then, the company sells out to a larger corporation, who promptly drops those retirees from coverage? Now on a fixed income, and getting older and so facing more need for coverage, where do they turn? Nobody cares about that, who makes enough money to have enough voice that counts. Not the insurance execs, not the company execs who made the decision. Well, with universal health coverage and a cheaper public option, perhaps those who actually worked for a living, and worked hard, will be allowed to keep their homes. If that means Mr. Limbaugh has to cough up a little coin, even 2% of his estimated $40 million/year salary, I'm really not going to weep for him.
So as I understand it the argument is that the possibility of jail does not come from not having insurance but from the refusal to make payment of a tax resulting from the refusal to have government approved insurance. And yes it does have to be government approved insurance as stated in the first Fact. What convoluted logic. Kind of like saying you are not being jailed for drinking but for driving drunk. Never mind that you would have not been driving drunk and facing jail, if you had not been drinking. And we wonder why the country is so messed up.
Now a question comes to my mind. Where in the Constitution is the government allowed to demand that I have government approved health insurance or face a fine? I do not believe it is there. Also, failure to have health insurance has to be penalized by a tax because the Constitution does not allow the Federal Government to levy a fine or penalty against a private citizen for failure to be conscripted into any government program except for maybe military service. Taxation is the only legal means at which the government can do this thanks to the 16th amendment. Even given that, I wonder how that is going to hold up in the Supreme Court when it is tested and it will be. But then again the Supreme Court will probably turn tail and run like they did during the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies when 200 years of Constitutional and bankruptcy law was thrown out the window.
Now for a bit of irony, the only reason this provision is in there is to throw the insurance companies a bone since the bill requires the insurance industry to lose money to insure people they normally wouldn’t insure. It is adding millions of healthy people to the insurance roles who normally would not be there. Which is why you have AARP backing it. There are a lot of healthy 50+ people out there. A side comment; AARP lost my membership dues next year. So, people who don’t like the insurance companies are basically helping the insurance companies by supporting the bill.
Now don’t get me wrong. I do want to see health costs brought down. Who wouldn’t? But, from what I have read of the bill it does almost nothing to address costs. It only covers the mechanics of how we are going to cover the supposed 48 million people who either can’t afford, don’t want, or can’t get insurance. It does almost nothing to bring down the cost of say fixing a broken leg, surgery, etc... It doesn’t matter if it is revenue neutral or not if it does not address the costs. If I am wrong then someone please point out my error with specific data and not talking points.
Please feel free to comment, for some reason Media Matters can’t seem to get my password reset so I will not be able to rebut anything once I sign off tonight.
This bill is the worst possible 'solution' to medical care delivery service reform (none dare call it "health care".). I won't be taxed for breathing, I'm certainly not going to be taxed for this.
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