[fjp]

The important issue with Warren's "plan" is that it's essentially a $8,000 per year per employee head tax, so it's a regressive tax. An afterthought in the expense of hiring a very highly-paid employee, but a not-insignificant expense of hiring a lower-paid employee.

Not to mention that her plan exempts contractors and business under 50 employees, so it incentivizes businesses to to lean on contract labor or reorganize themselves into smaller sub-companies - a small paperwork expense in the scheme of things.

The business tax should be universal to stamp out avoidance and scaled to all payroll spend so it's at least not regressive, even if it's not a progressive tax.

[threeseed]

The problem with a new business tax is that it doesn't come for free.

Increasing businesses taxes reduces international competitiveness which can reduce taxation collected in other areas. Also politically it's an incredibly hard thing to implement.

And remember you have to do this at the same time as you're implementing Medicare for All. Making it a pretty radical transition by any measure.

[fjp]

Oh I agree it's a radical change from what we have now (Although the resulting system is one many countries have already succeeded with). I was merely pointing out how if the program - and the tax to support it - is not truly universal, you have created incentives for businesses to weasel out of it.

The exemptions are billed as being "pro-small-business" but that's a BS talking point. Universal medicare for all would take away all that healthcare-plan-administration overhead that small businesses already have to deal with and pay for. Plus the extraneous benefits of having employees and customers who aren't pressured to avoid basic health care and preventative care and then go bankrupt when they need a larger procedure.

But I think only a radical change can have any real effect. You have to get the denying-care-for-profit insurance bloodsuckers out of the system completely; any concessions to them should be viewed with extreme suspicion.

[three_seagrass]

Mandating businesses to pay health insurance costs for employees under the current system is already reducing international competitiveness.

Medicare-for-all makes the U.S. more competitive by making healthcare similar to other developed nations.