AP POLL: How to pay for health overhaul? Tax rich
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Americans don't want to shoulder the cost of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.
That's the finding from a new Associated Press poll, and it could be a boost for House Democrats, who have proposed taxing upper-income people to fund their sweeping remake of the U.S. medical system. Their plan, which the House approved this month, would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.
The poll, conducted by Stanford University with the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found survey participants sour on other ways of paying for the health overhaul that is being considered in Congress.
The options they don't like include taxing insurers on the high-value coverage packages derided by Obama and Democrats as "Cadillac plans." That tax approach, being weighed in the Senate, is one of the few proposals in any congressional legislation that analysts say would help reduce the nation's health expenditures. It has come under fire from organized labor and has little support in the House.
Lawmakers also are looking at levying new taxes on insurance companies, drug companies and medical device makers. But the only approach that got majority support in the AP poll was a tax on upper-income Americans.
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