How a Financial Tax Will Pay for National Health Care

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/04/how-a-financial-tax-will-pay-for-national-health-care/

April 4, 2016

How a Financial Tax Will Pay for National Health Care

by Jack Rasmus

Leading the assault have been supporters of Hillary Clinton, especially Paul Krugman, and other ‘stars’ of the economics profession like Christine Romer, Laura Tyson, Alan Kreuger, and Austan Goolsbe—all of whom have served in past Democrat administrations and are no doubt looking to return again in some capacity in a Hillary Clinton administration. Sometimes referred to as the ‘gang of four’, this past month all have been aggressively attacking Sanders’ economic programs and reforms. However, the target of their attacks, which began in February and continue, is Sanders’ proposals for financing a single payer-universal health care program by means of a financial transactions tax.

The irony of the Krugman-Gang of Four attack is that Sanders’ proposals represent what were once Democratic Party positions and programs—positions that have been abandoned by the Democratic Party and its mouthpiece economists since the 1980s as that party has morphed into a wing of the neoliberal agenda.

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Where does that current $1.2 trillion go? Not for health services for its citizens. It goes to health insurance companies and other ‘middlemen’, who don’t deliver one iota of health care services. They are the ‘paper pushers’, who skim off $1.2 trillion a year in profits that average returns of 20% a year and more. They are economic parasites, or what economists refer to as ‘rentier capitalists’ who don’t produce anything but suck profits and wages from those who do actually produce something. They then used the $1.2 trillion a year to buy up each other, expand globally, and deliver record dividend and stock buybacks for their shareholders.