Brown: Tax rich to finance health care

By Jonathan Riskind

 THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH                                                                                        

The Ohio Democrat spent about an hour discussing the pending health-care overhaul in a telephone town-hall meeting sponsored by the liberal group ProgressOhio, answering questions from some of the 228 people on the call as well as online queries. The event came as Senate and House Democrats tried to reconcile different health-care bills. The Democrat-written bills are opposed by virtually all Republicans from both bodies, who charge the bills are overly expensive and amount to government takeovers of the health-care system.

Among the major differences: The House legislation contains a government-run health plan and helps pay for covering millions of the uninsured through an income-tax hike on individuals with income of more than $500,000 and couples making more than $1 million. The Senate bill has no public option and finances its version partly through a 40 percent tax on employer-offered plans valued at more than $8,500 for an individual or $23,000 for a family.

The Senate’s health-plans tax is strongly opposed by labor unions, which say it will harm workers whose benefits have increased in place of stagnant wages.

Brown said he favors the House tax on the wealthy as a financing mechanism, adding that many nonunion workers would be affected by the health-plans tax and calling the income-tax hike on the wealthy a “more progressive” way to pay for expanding coverage.

“We shouldn’t be taxing these health benefits,” Brown said. “I am hoping we can get a better deal than that for workers. So-called Cadillac plans really aren’t.”

Many liberals are upset that even with Democrats controlling the House, Senate and White House, it doesn’t appear possible to approve a government-run health plan that would compete with private insurers. But while Brown was asked repeatedly about the public option and whether it might still happen, none of the callers asked him to vote against a final bill that didn’t feature a public option.

Brown said the public option wasn’t possible as part of this legislation because no Republicans and several Senate Democrats refused to vote for it. He accused them of being overly friendly to insurance interests.

But Brown also said he would continue to fight for a government-run plan in the future, as well as the ability for people younger than 65 to buy into Medicare, the federal health-care program for seniors.

jriskind@dispatch.com