Obama Proposes Small Business Tax Credits For Health

It is not surprising that Senator Obama is first out of the gate of the Presidential Candidates to speak of the aforementioned tax credits publicly. He is collaborating with the remarkable Senator Hillary Clinton whose valiant efforts to bring some sense of balance to this broken healthare system of ours some years ago was vetoed and essentially torpedoed from just about all in the establishment, fellow politicians (ok, she was not theoretically a politician at the time, but was the First Lady), and healthcare minions.

Some 65 million Americans in this country are uninsured. I have been one of them for some eight months, not being able to afford COBRA payments offered to me from my previous employer for cost prohibitive reasons.

It is time that someone had the tenacity to take on the lobbyists and special interest groups and yes, even the HMO's who have hijacked what used to be a very sensible and fair system, to the top tiered management type of system, ruled by indivuals who make arbitrary life changing decisions without the necessary medical background of a doctor. Perhaps they, too should be asked to take a Hippocratic Oath before becoming CEO's and CFO's of HMO's.

According to the NY Times article, "A statement detailing the proposal said small businesses create, on average, more than 2/3 of net new jobs each year, but they pay on average 18 percent more for health premiums than their larger counterparts". Too many of us remain unaware of the great contributions paid to us by small business. Those numbers seem grossly unfair to me - why should those who employ 2/3 of the American people be unnecessarily burdened with disproportionate healthcare costs. A tax subsidy/credit would be one way to balance the scale for those small businesses who keep so many of us, myself included - employed in this great nation.