Quote Originally Posted by daihashi
We have a candidate, Obama, who wants to increase income tax anywhere from 3-5% for his universal healthcare plan when 70% of americans are already recieving healthcare from their employers (which generally are blanket policies.. meaning you get covered regardless)... on top of that you want to throw away more of our money on enemy combatants who can just drag out the cases in our legal system.
Not sure where you got your 70% statistic, Daihashi, but it's inaccurate according to the National Coalition on Health Care and the Government Accountability Office (GOA).

At the time the last official stats went down on coverage/lack of coverage, the percentage of Americans with employer-provided health coverage was 59% and going down quickly. That 59% statistic was from 2006, the most recent stats available, and coverage was diminishing by about 9 million Americans each year, so it's lower now.

Those of us who do have employer-subsidized coverage, which isn't necessarily "blanket coverage" by any means in all circumstances, are increasingly shouldering a higher burden of that premium expense each year, as we are also shouldering more of the medical expenses themselves. To the tune of about 10 - 15% per year. About half of the uninsured population reside in households that earn more than $50,000 or more per year. So the "they-can-afford-their-own-coverage" argument doesn't hold water with health insurance expenses and medical expenses what they are. They cannot. Children, sadly, are vastly over-represented among the uninsured population. These stats apply to native or naturalized U.S. citizens, by the way, not to illegal immigrants (another common argument used against national health care).

You also failed to point out that Obama's tax plan isn't going to raise taxes for middle-class or low-income Americans. It's going to raise taxes on the wealthy and on large corporations, two groups who've had HUGE tax breaks under the Bush administration and will continue to receive such breaks under the McCain plan. This is one of the things that never fails to amaze me more than anything else--how anyone who falls into the low- or middle-income groups could ever think of voting Republican from a fiscal perspective.

This isn't throw-away money, by the way. Not for legal due process for foreigners who're not even convicted criminals or for health care for our citizens. It's for human lives. Iraqi war money could more accurately be described as throw-away money considering the justification the war was based upon. You can characterize it as such, but it is not.

Our taxes, by the way, are hugely affected by this war. We all pay an average of about $200 per month the support this war (some of us a lot more than that). If we can pay $250 million a day to support this war, then we can darn well find a way to cover our citizens with health care. That day is coming, too. Mark my words.

The sad truth is, according to the office of the United States Comptroller of Currency (The UCC at the Dept of Treasury, our chief accountants, basically), we really can't afford what we're doing now, from supporting this war to funding the VA and social security and Medicare/Medicaid, which, compared to Defense, are comparatively small expenses, without higher taxes. We're already on a trajectory of fiscal disaster, and neither party wants to honestly acknowledge that. The truth is taxes are going to have to go up under any circumstances, even McCain's. They can either go up so that wealthier people and corporations pay more, or they can go up on middle- and low-income folks.

This thread really has diverged into another topic, but I wanted to go on the record with those facts about insurance/lack of insurance since you were using that as an argument against due process for Guantanamo "combatants" and Obama.