There’s a golden opportunity approaching that could revolutionize the lives of every New Yorker, especially Long Islanders. I doubt if it will be taken because we don’t do “transformative” here, we do “baby steps.” Which is why your assessment system pre-dates Ethel Merman.
Now that there’s a Democratic majority in Albany, there’s a chance to execute Democratic policies. A movement to single payer health insurance is forming, and this could be the chance the State needs to finally end the overtaxed death spiral that drives businesses away, forces families to separate and makes the Island economically insufferable. All of this can be undone if the right policies are executed.
There’s no mystery as to why taxes keep escalating without relief in this state: their initials are CSEA, NYSUT, TWU and PBA. Thanks to the generous contracts these unions were rewarded, their members have been practically held harmless from the escalating costs of health insurance. In the past decade, according to the Kaiser Foundation, insuring a family of four has increased by 55 percent, and by 19 percent alone since 2012. The average premium for family coverage is now $18,764 per year. The hapless County taxpayer is hit from both sides: not only must he cover his own double-digit increases for his family, but that of the civil services’. The NYSUT member has it particularly cushy: about 75 percent of their coverage is funded by your property taxes, and the sequential double-digit cost increases a head of household has had to deal with are derisively dismissed by educators. The taxpayer not only bears the brunt of the cost of the most dysfunctional health care system in the world, it then gets squeezed by the most dysfunctional assessment system in the world. The majority of taxpayers on this Island have been economically strangled for years, mercilessly exploited without respite, and with no chance of restoring the economic equilibrium they once knew.
Single payer is one way out of this. The simple math is that once property taxation for the health insurance component for the public sector is removed, the tax calculus undergoes an immediate transformation. The truth is that when costs are broken out, the Long Island taxpayer isn’t paying for superior services. Mostly, the outsized costs come from unrestrained increases in benefits like this, which far outpace the earnings of every working person. No one can keep up (unless you’re named parking commissioner.)
There’s one thing stopping this from taking place. Some of the unions are balking at it. Why? They’re not embarrassed to say it: they fear that health care for all could reduce the appeal of union membership, since comprehensive coverage has long been one of the best perks of a union job. There’s nothing new about this. Even Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor, quickly learned that unions are about “equality for me, but not for thee.”
To their credit, some union leaders are in favor of it, since they’re committed to a better deal for everyone, not just for those whose dues pay their salaries.
The move to single payer makes good sense from every standpoint. This is also very timely: now that we’ve lost our SALT deduction, deflating property taxes sticks it right back to Washington. They can no longer tax what we don’t. And for those who think this smacks of “socialism” or “government control,” that’s the wrong way to look at it. Other industrialized nations that utilize socialized medicine don’t do it because they’re raving Maoists. They do it because it’s the cheapest, most effective and practical way to assure that every citizen gets the health care they need regardless of the state of the economy, where they work, who they work for, or having to tolerate the savagery of putting their own citizens through bankruptcy just to stay alive. This is barbaric and has no place in our society.
Besides that, why do self-professed “conservatives” insist on adding the cost of health insurance to the cost of production? We can’t compete with a globalized workforce on those terms.
So will it happen? Probably not. There are many interests who profit off of bleeding everyone else dry, and the American voter remains stubbornly convinced that handing $12,000 a year to United Health Care is infinitely better than paying far less to the state along with getting a property tax cut. We recall Mencken’s words once again: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
Donald Davret
Roslyn
