im not inherently against it. perhaps you should answer the "why not?" i never said anything about %. you said you were against "each according to their abilities". taxing a % is just that. so i guess you want each american to pay $10,000 in fed income taxes/yr. nothing. i dont think he has claimed to be or even thinks he is an expert on it either. but he was elected (including healthcare overhaul as a major part of his platform). he is obligated to do it. "where the citizens as a whole are better off because of the healthcare" this is basically impossible to determine, but all of the reasonable measures ive heard of say the US is at the back of the pack (relative to comperable societies). conservatives (or knee-jerk patriots) will always shoot holes in anything that characterizes the US as anything less than the best in the world. so i cant answer that. the country should trade the expensive (best in the world if you have $$$ system) for a decent one that gives everyone basic healthcare.
Where did I say that? I did however, advocate a tax plan where everyone pays an equal rate, not amount. In the totally arbitrary example I pulled out of thin air, the person paying 15% on $1,000,000 income pays $150,000 tax, while a person paying $20,000 pays only $300. That's a long way from "each american pays $10,000." Fair enough. I didn't vote for him, and question his qualification for doing so. Let's see them. However, I'm betting they're going to come down to issues of health matters that can be self-monitored through behavior (diet, exercise, et al, rather than a doctor's care), or to issues of blanket availability as opposed to quality (having 100% of a population with access to free health care is irrelavent if the quality of the care sucks). Since earlier on, I said... ....I assume you're not counting me among those knee jerk patriots. For that matter, I don't think I've read a single message on this board that leads me to believe the poster thought nothing should be done. Let's just make sure what we do is the right thing.
