Taxes and Health

Unlike most conservatives, I don’t cringe in fear that health reform will destroy the American health care system, nor do I believe that it is necessarily the best in the world. I think it could stand a lot of improvement and I think it’s too bad that Republicans have never put forward an alternative to the Democrats’ proposal.

That said, I have said from the beginning (here, here and here) that Barack Obama’s plan suffers from a fatal flaw: the lack of dedicated financing. I think he was wrong to finance a broad-based new government benefit that is not paid for largely by the beneficiaries, as Social Security and Medicare are.

Now there is some polling data that supports my argument. According to a new Reuters poll, 63% of Americans would be willing to pay more taxes to pay for health reform that improved the health care system.

Of course, there are a lot of questions left unanswered: what reforms constitute improvement, what sorts of taxes would people be willing to pay and how much. But at least in principle, this poll shows, contrary to Republican dogma, that people are willing to pay higher taxes if they get something worthwhile in return.