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Bottom line..


Americans are not interested in paying significantly higher income taxes to have ‘government-provided’ healthcare. National health insurance, or single payer, is a dream for many Americans, but if they actually comprehended what it will cost them, and the rest of the taxpayers, they may pause and reconsider.


For example, Britain has a relatively well-regarded universal healthcare system that every citizen pays for through national income tax. The tax rate for income tax and National Health Insurance in the United Kingdom (England) in 2015-16 for all citizens earning between zero and £31,785, considered basic-rate (flat rate) taxpayers, is a whopping 20 percent of their entire income. It is a full 15 percent more than America’s middle class tax rate and would entail a 20 percent tax hike for 45 percent of Americans who pay nothing now.


If a British citizen earns just one pence over that “basic threshold,” their income tax rate jumps to 40 percent up to £150,000. For income over that number the rate is 45 percent; all to cover the National Health plan administered solely by the government with a form of rationing.


For a comparison, and one reason why many Democrats are reticent to go all-in to support enactment of single-payer in America, in 2015, 45 percent of Americans with earned income paid zero income tax. One cannot comprehend how nearly half of the population living in poverty and barely making it and then saddled with a 20 percent tax bill will embrace being poorer to have basic healthcare when they will be unable to eat or pay rent.


Many of those “45-percenters” are in poor Republican states and already complain they are “taxed enough already;” it is just one reason they reliably vote for Republicans pledging to cut taxes, get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, and get government out of the healthcare business.


For middle class Americans, the federal income tax rate stands at about 5.3 percent for tax year 2015. It is as laughable that Americans paying nothing in income taxes will support a 20 percent increase as it is the middle class supporting a 34.7 percent tax hike for universal healthcare; not when they already have healthcare insurance or can buy a “Cadillac” policy and still have money to eat, pay rent, take a vacation, and still afford their 5.3 percent federal income tax bill.....http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/10/why-americans-cant-have-universal-healthcare-like-europeans.html


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