Fair Tax: Part IV, Healthcare

What of Healthcare? Well, medicine and insurance would have no tax attached to it. All citizens would be required to have emergency insurance. The Fair Tax could easily provide for this. All you need is a health care account for all citizens (perhaps represented by some kind of card) and flat benefit (say $200-$250 per dependent). This would help the lower-class greatly but be of little consequence to the upper-class. You could easily shop around from a bunch of private health care providers or (if your employer covers you) use the money for medication and doctor's visits. Just yesterday, I bought Medical/Dental insurance for $75 a month (and additional dependents were not much more). Such a plan would cover a large percentage of your insurance, but you would still have to save up for other costs.

Health care can even be tied into education. We know that lower-class children are more at risk for health issues and all public schools engage in fitness testing. Why not provide a flat benefit to all students who pass the Presidential Fitness exam (and one to those who are physically unable to compete). True, they would have to be stringently run at central locations; but we could again make fitness a big deal for youth. 

This could be just the tip of the iceberg for restructuring under education. Money from the Fair Tax would be used for only two purposes: providing a standardized test to appraise the job school districts are doing and provide flat grants for individual schools. The European countries actually open up schools to total choice and we may consider doing this as well. It creates fabulous competition. I would only add the caveat that the individual transferring has to pay equivalent taxes to a local taxpayer. This is particularly important because municipalities would take over almost all basic taxes and services. Again, the flat grants would benefit poorer school districts which generally lack the means to find outside contributors. Unlike Michigan's MEAP test, the new test would have no bearing on monetary decisions. Rather, it would only provide the public with an idea of where schools are lacking and provide students with an idea of their progress.

Overall, the Fair Tax is not a perfect system. Additionally, I apologize for saying too much and not making this seven individual articles (though that may be a project for the future) However, the Fair Tax is a revolutionary alternative that is absolutely what the State of Michigan and, probably, the US needs right now. The combination of the Fair Tax and the flat benefit principle provide a simple and lethal combination to counteract our current economic and social shortcomings. It is my contention that the system I have outlined here would improve many facets of our society including: Fiscal responsibility, job creation, environmental concerns, health care, education, and more. To paraphrase conservative poster-boy Ronald Reagan, "The solution to our problem are not complex but simple and they are not easy but hard."