Iraq and Health Insurance

Quote of the day:
“There will be an answer, let it be.”
--Paul McCartney

There has been a lot of talk about the relevance or irrelevance of Tuesday’s State of the Union address. I think there’s a lot of room for discussion and negotiation on each item that President Bush proposed.

Two of his underlying assumptions baffle me. First, I thought that our biggest problem related to health insurance is the huge number of people who cannot afford it. How exactly is making premiums tax-deductible going to make health insurance affordable for people who don’t have it, most of whom are in a tax bracket between 0% and 15%?

If a monthly premium of $500 is not affordable, is 15% less ($425) going to be affordable for a family that is already living paycheck to paycheck? I’m not saying that the tax deduction would not help a few people, and it certainly would be a nice present to those in higher tax brackets. But it seems to me there is a much, much bigger problem that needs attention: providing health insurance for those who most need it and cannot afford it.

The second assumption relates to the possibility of our withdrawal from Iraq. Bush made the obvious point that there would be chaos of we removed our armed forces. Won’t there be chaos whenever we decide to withdraw--whether it be now, in two years or in five years? Former National Security Advisor Richard Clarke said this several months ago--see Iraq Logic.

Watching the chaos and bloodshed that follows our withdrawal will be very difficult. But using the potential for chaos as a reason for not withdrawing from Iraq now is a very weak argument.