My Point of View: Single-payer plan only works if it includes all
Published 5:15 pm Monday, April 1, 2019
My Point of View by John Forman

John Forman
I have enjoyed reading the columns by Rep. Peggy Bennett in the past couple of weeks, and I agree with her views on the budget and taxes. We can not spend our way out of all of our problems, and we must be able to tell the difference between wants and needs. The gas tax has been raised to fix roads recently, and now the governor wants another 20 cents in addition for the same purpose. We need to learn to spend money wisely and not pay for the same service over and over again like the driver’s license fiasco.
On the federal level, Democrats want to spend tens of millions more on investigating the 2016 presidential election, even after a heavily left leaning group of high-paid lawyers have spent tens of millions of dollars and found no Russian collusion.
I must now remind everyone that the name of the column is My Point of View, and it is not a column that represents the point of view of all Republicans.
I want to thank the editorial board for trying to explain the county agreement with the Freeborn County wind farm as a legal document that protects the county from damages and lawsuits and is a necessary part of this process. I encourage the county commissioners to vote for the agreement.
Now, lets move on to single-payer health insurance. I have been in favor of single-payer for years. As a partner in a business that employed over 50 people, we were required to offer health insurance. People say you can no longer discriminate against a person who has preexisting conditions, which is true, but you can discriminate against the group he belongs to. We had an aging workforce and had several high cost medical claim individuates in our group. Before Obamacare, the state had a high cost insurance pool for people with chronic conditions and insurance company were required to participate in the pool. Our company paid a higher premium for these individuals but not for the whole group. The individual paid only the same premium as the rest of the employees. This plan helped keep costs down for all.
After Obamacare the cost of insurance increased substantially every year, and we tried many plans to lower cost. The one thing these plans had in common was it meant higher cost to our employees as well as even higher costs to the company. The rates for individuals with incomes that do not qualify for subsidies increased to astronomical levels. The state raised income levels for subsidies to $100,000. Guess who pays for those subsidies: the employees and employers who are being charged huge premiums for their employer-sponsored plans through fees and their state income taxes. The single-payer plan only works if it includes everyone. This includes government workers, elected officials and union workers. For years, some groups have taken better plans or lower premiums for insurance instead of wage increases to avoid paying income taxes on their additional benefits. To counter this, any plan that gives benefits above the single-payer plan should be taxed as income and the employer and the employee should also pay all state state and federal wage taxes associated with these plans — Social security, Medicare and unemployment insurance. I will leave the discussion of what this would do to medical service to another time.
A reminder this is my point of view, and if others want to write a column for the Republican week they are welcome to do so.
John Forman is a member of the Freeborn County Republican Party.