Income Tax

How Income Taxes Work…and Why The Big Beautiful Bill Isn’t So Beautiful

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

It stands to reason that I’m no fan of the Congressional Budget Bill that was recently signed into law. There’s a lot to hate about the contents of that legislation, and I’ve touched on some of those things previously. But it’s worth taking a moment to look at the “good” portions of what we’ve all heard referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” as well. This is, after all, the bill that everyone is so proud of and so certain you should be proud of too.

Before I get to all of that, unfortunately, I’m going to have to spend some time on a bit of a tangent. This will be long, tedious, and number-heavy, but I will do my best to make it at least marginally interesting too. It could be beneficial for everyone to read it. It seems like many people don’t understand the basics of how taxes work, so I also want to take some time to delve into that, while discussing how we are shortchanging Social Security and our Federal Revenue by catering to the wealthiest people in America. To do that, a discussion of how Taxes work is sort of imperative.

The 2017 Tax Cuts were set to expire this year, but are now permanent. However, I’m not sure how many people actually comprehend how tax rates are applied or how the brackets work, so it might be worthwhile to dedicate some time to explaining that.

For an individual (I’m not doing this for all statuses, you can do that shit yourself):

We’re going to make this simple; we’re going to pretend you earn $1 Million a year. Yes, I understand that less than 0.5% of Households fall into that category. In America, fewer than one million Households earn at least $1 Million in annual income. Congratulations on becoming part of the Top 1%, you magnificent bastard.

For the first $11,600 you earn, you owe 10% of that in Federal Taxes, which is $1,160. The math on that little bit is simple, just remove a 0 from the end.

For every dollar you earn between that amount and $47,150, you owe 12% in Federal Taxes. This comes out to $4,266. So, if your income were exactly $47,150 per year, you would only owe $5,426 in total. But that’s not you. You’re earning a whole hell of a lot more than that now.

For every dollar between $47,150 and $100,525, you are paying 22% in Federal Taxes, which translates into an additional $11,742.50.

The next bracket takes you all the way up to an income of $191,950. At that point, you are paying 24%, or another $21,942. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll see that our current Tax Burden is sitting at $39,110.50.

From $191,950 to $243,725, we are looking at a rate of 32% paid out to the Federal Government. That adds another $16,568 to your tax bill.

The next bracket is in effect up to $609,350, at a rate of 35%. That tacks on an additional $127,968.75. Your total Tax Burden is now sitting at $183,647.25. I know, that seems like an awful lot. But, come on, you’d be earning more than $600,000, giving up less than a third of that doesn’t seem so bad. Don’t be so greedy.

For every dollar above that, regardless of how much more you earn, we’re looking at a static rate of 37%. So, for the rest of your $1 Million income, it’s only another $144,540.50. See, that really isn’t so bad.

So, on your brand new $1 Million salary, you’d owe the IRS a grand total of $328,187.75 for the year, leaving you with $671,812.25 of your income.

Of course, there’s also Social Security Tax, which is currently 6.2% on everything up to $176,100. If that seems unreasonably low to you, next year the cap will be higher, because it adjusts annually according to the average wage index.

We’re going to stop here for a moment. Consider it the equivalent of a Scenic Overlook on a road trip. Much like a Scenic Overlook, you can take this as an opportunity to relieve your bladder. If you’d like to know one major reason Social Security is going to be depleted by 2032, we just skirted past it. One primary cause is that you (with your $1 Million annual salary) are not paying into Social Security on $823.900 of your earnings. That would have been $51,081.80 that could be contributed in addition to the $10,918.20 you’re paying in. The math on that one is easy, too, because it’s another example of simply removing a 0 or two. Instead of paying $62,000 into the Social Security fund, you only paid $10,918.20. If your salary were $5 Million, you avoided paying $299,081.80. That hardly seems reasonable, does it?

As we discussed (you lucky bastard), fewer than 0.5% of American households had an annual income of more than $1 Million in 2022, according to the World Economic Forum. Somewhere in the vicinity of 400,000 to 500,000 people earn $1 Million or more a year. Assuming they were all capped at exactly $1 Million, and there were 400,000 of them, that would be $20.4 Billion not being collected for Social Security every year because of that cutoff at $176,100. This has been a problem since the 1980s, because earnings for upper-income levels have risen substantially faster than those of the rest of the population.

Despite President Trump’s assurances that the Congressional Budget Bill would remove taxes on Social Security, that is not what happened. Instead, what we received was a temporary Deduction that applies to all income for people 65 and over, though it does include Social Security income.

The final version passed by the Senate makes this a $6,000 Deduction for individuals with adjusted gross income of up to $75,000 annually, or $150,000 for couples filing together.

The deduction will expire after four years and does not apply to all recipients, including those who claim Social Security benefits before they turn 65. So, unless you’re over the age of 61, you won’t be benefiting from this temporary deduction.

This is where we locate yet another major driver behind the failure of our Social Security program. Some estimates suggest this will accelerate the depletion of Social Security by two years, pushing the date up to 2032. All while increasing the federal debt by 7% over the next 30 years. So, suppose you’re under 58 years old as you’re reading this. In that case, you can dispel any assumption that you’ll be able to benefit from the tax-free Social Security (or Social Security at all) when you do turn 65, because the Social Security Trust will more than likely be empty, no matter how much you personally paid into it throughout your employment history. I’ll come back to the depletion of Social Security after I finish going over how your taxes work and take some time to touch on the other “good” things found in the Congressional Budget Bill.

Moving on, there’s the Medicare Tax of 1.45% up to $200,000, and 2.35% on every dollar beyond that, so you’re paying $21,700 into Medicare for the year.

Deductions then factor in, and the odds are that your effective tax burden will be substantially decreased.

First, there are Above-The-Line deductions. These are subtracted from that $1 Million you earned for the year before anything else factors in, decreasing your Tax Burden by formulating your Adjusted Gross Income.

If you paid toward Student Loans, used a Health Savings Account, contributed to a traditional IRA, or any of several other things that contribute to your overall deductions, that’s something you can figure out on your own. Those things are deducted before the Standard Deduction.

The Senate version of the Congressional Budget Bill allows people to deduct income paid as tips (in careers where tips are customary). This amount is capped at a maximum of $25,000. I’m not sure how common it is for someone to earn more than $25,000 in tips over a year, but since most tipped workers are at or below the Federal Poverty Level, it seems unlikely that there are many. This is only in effect through 2028.

The Senate proposal limits that deduction on Overtime Pay to $12,500 per individual. This is also temporary, expiring after 2028.

So, those are some of the “positive” things we can look forward to.

The Standard Deduction was previously $15,000 for an individual or $30,000 for a married couple filing jointly. Once the changes took effect, the Standard Deduction increased to $15,750 and $31,500, respectively.

The new Standard Deduction of $15,750 is a given, but anything else beyond that is specific to the individual. Assuming none of the Above-The-Line deductions apply to you, what that means is that you will only be taxed as if you earned $984,250 instead of $1 Million, which would knock $5,817.50 off of your tax bill. That doesn’t seem like much, but it’s not nothing. Of course, if you have to itemize your deductions, the change in the Standard Deduction is irrelevant.

Non-itemizing filers can now claim $1,000 in charitable giving per year, and couples can claim $2,000 for deductions.

The Senate’s version of the Child Tax Credit, while slightly lower, is permanent. So, instead of a deduction of $2,500 per child, it’s $2,200, but at least it doesn’t expire in 2028 as some of the Above-The-Line deductions will.

The State and Local Tax Deduction will increase from $10,000 to $40,000, and increase by an additional 1% every year until 2030, when it will revert to $10,000. I don’t know if you live in a state where you pay State Income Tax, but chances are good that you do. That percentage is extremely variable, depending on where you live (which you know if you read what I wrote regarding Single-Payer Healthcare), so I won’t bother calculating it. I live in a state without it, but work in a state where there is State Income Tax, so this is beneficial to me.

The changes to the Estate and Gift Tax will benefit almost no one.

It increases from an exemption of $13.99 Million to $15 Million for individuals and $27.98 Million to $30 Million for couples who file jointly. I say this will benefit almost no one because the minimum net worth to be part of the wealthiest 1% is $13.7 Million as of this January, according to Investopedia. So, less than 1% of the population has the potential to leave an Estate or Gift of $15 Million.

Now, the trouble is that the people who could benefit from that increased exemption are the ones who really don’t fucking need it.

Individuals like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other multi-billionaires avoid paying Income Taxes in several ways. Elon Musk receives no salary from Tesla, but was approved for a ten-year pay plan from the company last year that had a value of $44.9 Billion. The trick is that it was all in stocks, which means he won’t be paying any Federal Income Tax on that, while he can still use the stock value as collateral for loans, credit, and the like.

Mark Zuckerberg received an annual income of $1 last year, but received compensation amounting to $27.2 Million, which included $14 Million to cover his security and an estimated $1 Million in private jet travel. The rest, as you would imagine, came in the form of stocks.

Peter Thiel’s income is not publicly available. That’s something you might find amusing, considering what Palantir is capable of. Despite not knowing his annual income, we do know he has invested more than $5 Billion in Roth IRAs, which cannot be taxed, assuming he waits until retirement to liquidate them.

Jeff Bezos typically received a salary of $81,840, with total compensation that added up to $1.68 Million in 2022. Because of how he earns most of his money, via stock options, it was estimated he earned $8 Million every hour of the year between 2023 and 2024. And yet, there are several years in which he paid no Federal Income Tax, and has maintained an effective Tax Rate of 0.98% compared to his accumulation of wealth.

If you’re noticing a trend, you’re at least moderately observant. These people at the top of the American financial ladder are not even coming close to contributing their fair share in taxes. In part, because we don’t tax Unrealized Gains, which means all the stock options contribute to their Net Wealth and allow these people to live as they do, but are never taxed until they sell shares, and then Capital Gains Tax comes into play.

If something doesn’t seem wrong about that, you’re not paying attention.

There are years when the wealthiest people in the world are literally paying less in taxes than the people below the poverty level, and not just by percentage, but by dollar value.

Putting an end to that should be a priority. All it would take is implementing an Unrealized Gains Tax above a certain dollar value, maybe a 50% Tax on anything above $15 Million (just like the Estate and Gift Tax). Hell, Kamala Harris was far more generous, proposing a 25% tax on Unrealized Gains for anything over $100 Million. People freaked out over that because they had no idea what they were talking about, and because they were fed misinformation and fear-mongering that led them to believe their home’s increasing sales value would further increase their taxes. In reality, her proposal would have impacted fewer than 11,000 people nationally, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably not one of them. You probably don’t even know any of them, at least personally. That’s the kind of Tax Reform we need from something that anyone would consider worthy of calling a Big Beautiful Bill.

Now, I promised I’d get back to this, and I like to keep my promises. There’s one more massive driver behind the imminent failure of our Social Security program. It’s time to finish the discussion of why Social Security is likely to be bankrupt in only seven short years. We can thank Ronald Reagan and his Social Security Amendments of 1983 for that lovely little “fuck you,” with powerful assists from Alan Greenspan and a complicit and lazy 98th U.S. Congress.

Unfortunately, Trickle-Down (Supply Side) Economics was working out precisely as anyone but a moron would expect it to, and the decreased tax rates (for the highest income earners) were generating far less revenue than was promised. Our economy was in pretty big fucking trouble, because nothing but the delusional fantasies of our President happened to be trickling down. Reagan convinced a large number of people that Social Security was on the verge of bankruptcy, even though it wasn’t. But he had a solution. It was a two-pronged approach that would save everyone.

Surplus Social Security revenue generated by a Payroll Tax Hike implemented under Reagan, to the tune of roughly $2.7 Trillion, was meant to be invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds and held in trust until approximately 2010. That was it. That was his brilliant solution. It might have actually paid off, but Ronald Reagan was (predictably) Ronald Reagan.

Of course, Reagan, being the piece of shit he was, the surplus revenue raised by the payroll tax hike went into the General Fund instead of U.S. Treasury Bonds. Reagan then proceeded to spend every dime of that surplus that appeared during his remaining time in the White House. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush followed suit and treated it like a fucking slush fund as well. Instead of putting $2.7 Trillion into trust, the money was spent on wars, covering the deficit from additional tax cuts for the wealthy, and shoring up other areas of the government.

Maybe this would have worked out if Social Security hadn’t stopped generating surplus revenue back in 2009, but it did. In 2010, it ran at a loss for the first time since 1983, by more than $40 Billion. This was money we borrowed from China. And we’ve had to borrow money from somewhere every year since then.

Well, we all sort of see where it goes from there. What’s worth noting is that, assuming we’d just kept the $2.7 Trillion where it belonged, and our Social Security shortage was by roughly $50 Billion every year, it could still be solvent through 2064, or 32 additional years from what is now projected.

Not Only CAN We Pay for It, We SHOULD.

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

There’s always a lot of talk about how we can’t afford Single-Payer Healthcare here in America, and how much our taxes would increase if we were to implement a Universal Healthcare System. I got tired of listening to people who probably haven’t performed any mathematical operations more involved than basic addition or subtraction since they reached adulthood. I decided it was worthwhile to examine three countries that do provide for their citizens: Denmark, Canada, and the UK, to see how they compare to us here.

For the sake of simplicity, despite it making the whole process far more complicated for me, I’ve taken the liberty of converting all currencies to USD based on the conversion rates as they were today.

In Denmark, there is no Federal Tax on the first $8,080 an individual earns. From $8,080 to $94,224, there is a 12% Federal Tax rate. Anything above $94,224 is taxed at a rate of 15%.

If someone were to earn a hypothetical annual income of $150,000, they would face a total Federal Tax burden of $18,673.68, leaving them with $131,326.32 of their income.

There’s also a Municipal Tax rate that falls between 22 and 27% on all income. At the highest rate, it would decrease the remaining amount to $95.858.49. This means they pay a total of $54,141.51 in taxes on an annual income of $150,000. At the lower rate of 22%, it amounts to a grand total of $51,673.68 they’d pay.

In America, an individual is looking at a tax rate of 10% on the first $11,925. They pay 12% on everything earned between $11,925 and $48,475, 22% from that amount to $103,350, and 24% up to $197,300. So, the same person earning $150,000 in the United States would have a Federal Tax burden of $28,847, which is substantially higher than the federal taxes paid in Denmark.

To factor in municipal taxes, the closest comparison is to consider state income taxes, where applicable.

In the eight states where there is no State Income Tax, that $28,847 is all the individual pays, based on their annual wage. Most of us, of course, live in the 42 states where there’s an income tax levied on an individual’s wages.

Fourteen of those states have a single rate applied to all income, as opposed to a progressive system like we have at the federal level. Arizona is 2.5%, Colorado and Mississippi are 4.4%, Georgia is 5.39%, Idaho is 5.695%, Illinois is 4.95%, Indiana and Louisiana are 3%, Iowa is 3.8%, Kentucky is 4%, Michigan and North Carolina are 4.25%, and Pennsylvania is 3.07%.

In Arizona, the individual would pay an additional $3,750, and in Idaho, they would pay $8,542.50 in addition to the $28,847 they’re paying in Federal Income Tax. The larger amount is $38,389.50, so an individual living in Idaho would pay only $15,752.01 less in state and federal taxes than someone living in Denmark, on the same $150,000.

For states with progressive tax rates, you could be facing a maximum rate of 5% in Alabama and Massachusetts, 3.9% in Arkansas, 9.3% in California, 6% in Connecticut, 6.6% in Delaware, 7.9% in Hawaii, 5.58% in Kansas, 7.15% in Maine, 5.25% in Maryland, 7.85% in Minnesota, 4.7% in Missouri, 5.9% in Montana, 5.2% in Nebraska, 6.37% in New Jersey, 4.9% in New Mexico, 6% in New York, 1.95% in North Dakota, 3.5% in Ohio, 4.75% in Oklahoma and Rhode Island, 9.9% in Oregon, 6.2% in South Carolina, 7.6% in Vermont, 5.75% in Virginia, 4.82% in West Virginia, 5.3% in Wisconsin, and 8.5% in the District of Columbia.

For someone in North Dakota, that would translate into a total State Income Tax of $2,925, while in Oregon, it would come to $12,894.50 above the federal taxes collected, or a total tax burden of $41,741.50. This is only $12,400.01 below the maximum federal and municipal tax burden on the same income in Denmark.

We already know that taxes are higher in Denmark than in the U.S.. That comes as no surprise. But now we understand what the difference is, instead of imagining some abstract higher dollar value. So, let’s take a look at two other nations with universal healthcare.

Canadian federal taxes are 15% up to $41,883.75, 20.5% from there to $83,767.50, 26% up to $129,853.86 and 29% up to $184,992.22. The same $150,000 annual salary would lead to a total of $32,693.57 in federal taxes.

The individual provinces have their own tax rates, of course. The highest rate you’d experience at that salary would be in Nova Scotia, which is 21% on anything over $112,894.50. The lowest would be Nunavut, which has a rate of 11.5% on any income above $129,853.13. Looking at the highest rate, you’d be looking at an additional $24,829.79 beyond the $32,693.57 in federal tax, for a total of $57,523.36, which is moderately higher than the highest burden you’d encounter in Denmark.

In the UK, there is no tax burden up to the first $17,220.90. We’re looking at 20% from there until $68,869.90, and 40% up to $171,441.80. So for the same income of $150,000, you’d pay a total of $42,781.84 in federal taxes. You’d also be responsible for National Insurance Tax of 8% on earnings from $17,220.90 to $68,869.90, and 2% on earnings above that. Thus, you’d be paying an additional $5,754.52 on top of the $42,781.84, for a grand total of $48,536.36, which is lower than in both Canada and Denmark, but still slightly higher than the previous examples of Idaho or Oregon.

Of course, in Denmark, Canada, and the UK, you benefit from Single-Payer Healthcare along with those higher tax burdens; burdens that may not be quite as comparatively high as people in the U.S. often imagine them to be. Those increased taxes are largely offset by what we pay for our Insurance Premiums, even with employer-provided insurance.

The cost of individual Health Insurance Premiums in the U.S. can average anywhere from as little as $1,368 to as much as $8,951 per year, and family coverage is often dramatically higher. None of that even factors in the Out-Of-Pocket expenses for care and medication or multi-thousand-dollar deductibles we’re responsible for, before Health Insurance provides any assistance at all. For example, I have comparably fantastic Health Insurance through my employer. The Deductible for my Family Coverage is $3,300 annually, with an Out-Of-Pocket Maximum of $7,500. God forbid we have to find help Out-Of-Network, though, because the Deductible there is $10,000. Halfway through July, my Insurance Premium has cost me $1,491. It’s worth noting that this is entirely separate from Dental and Vision Insurance. To put all of that in perspective, that means that, in addition to the $1,491 I’ve paid just for the privilege of having Health Insurance, I also have to pay $3,300 Out-Of-Pocket before Insurance begins contributing to further Medical Care or Mental Health expenses. Until I’ve paid $7,500 Out-Of-Pocket, all my Health Insurance will contribute is a percentage toward those costs. I want to remind you that I have exceptionally affordable Health Insurance compared to many people I know.

All of this is brokered through Insurance Companies that receive massive Subsidies from the tax dollars we’re already paying. Companies that actually increase the cost of healthcare in the process. UnitedHealth Group, made famous by Luigi Mangioni, is a perfect example of this.

UnitedHealth Group raked in $372 Billion in 2023, $281 Billion of that revenue from the insurance division headed by Brian Thompson, the man killed on a New York City street by Mangioni. Only two years earlier, UnitedHealth’s insurance division obtained 72% of its revenue from Federal Subsidies, and it can only be assumed that the percentage increased by 2023. In 2024, the Federal Government spent between $1.7 and $1.9 Trillion on Healthcare Subsidies. All of this is money paid out to an industry of middlemen who have inserted themselves between people and their healthcare providers, while making massive profits in the process. In contrast, the UK spent approximately $353.5 Billion on healthcare in 2024. That is less than 19% of U.S. spending. Of course, the population of the UK is just shy of 70 Million, roughly 20% of the U.S. population of nearly 350 Million. What that means is that the Per Capita spending is virtually the same, though actually lower for the UK…but the majority of U.S. taxpayers see none of the benefits associated with that health spending. Looking at those numbers, it makes me wonder why there would even be a need to increase Income Tax rates if we weren’t propping up a parasitic and unnecessary industry in the process.

Or is it simply that the UK and other nations are better equipped to efficiently provide for their citizens than the U.S. happens to be? I’m willing to admit that we’re just not very good at doing things efficiently or effectively. I think there’s more than sufficient evidence to reinforce that perspective.

Beyond purely financial considerations, Single-Payer systems are far less likely to deny service, and when it does happen, it is typically an administrative error. Whereas, here in America, it’s a cost-saving measure on the part of the provider to maintain its profit margins.

And, the real kicker, if you don’t receive at least your premium costs in coverage from your insurer (and most people don’t), that money gets spread around to everyone else covered by the same insurance provider and to the people working there, leading to massive profits for the corporations in question and CEO salaries that can reach as high as $23 Million in total compensation. For example, even though I have reached my Deductible of $3,300 for the year, my Insurance Company is highly unlikely to pay out even the $1,491 I’ve paid so far in Premiums for their percentage of the payments before the new annual cycle begins.

Of course, none of this even takes into consideration the portion of my Premium that’s paid by my employer, which has reached almost $8,000 so far this year. So, even if my Insurance Company somehow ends up paying out $5,000 for their part of my Healthcare expenses, they’ve already got $4,419 lining their pockets without either me or my employer paying another dime toward the Premiums. I don’t get that money back. My employer certainly doesn’t receive the excess back at the end of the year either. Have you ever looked at your paychecks and calculated how much free money you and your employer are handing over to an Insurance Company that (as a policy) does whatever it can to avoid helping you? Now, take a moment to consider that all of the money coming in from people like you adds up to maybe a quarter of what the Insurance Company has for revenue.

But, of course, it’s “Socialism” if your Tax Dollars provide Single-Payer Health Coverage for every Citizen in the U.S.. But if your money is distributed between the thousands of people with the same insurer (while lining the pockets of the obscenely wealthy), then it’s an entirely different sort of thing. It’s “Socialism” even though it’s a Public Service provided by the Capitalist Governments of essentially every other Civilized Nation in the world, as well as several that we consider less than “First World” countries.

One additional benefit worth noting is that public universities cap most tuition at less than $13,000 per year in the UK. Canadians can expect an average annual tuition of under $4,800, and college tuition is not charged at all in Denmark. Whereas in the U.S., In-State tuition averages roughly $11,000 per year (ranging from less than $7k in Florida or Wyoming to more than $20k in Connecticut or Pennsylvania), and Out-Of-State tuition explodes to an average of around $30,000 (from less than $13k in South Dakota to more than $60k in Michigan).

Which is to say that you can be both healthier and better well-educated at substantially less cost in those nations, even when you factor in the increased tax burdens. Of course, as I pointed out already, there’s no reason to raise the taxes individuals pay in the U.S. if we were more efficiently utilizing the slightly higher amount the U.S. already pays Per Capita for Healthcare Subsidies than the government of the UK.

Don’t let idiots and fear-mongers influence you. None of the nations discussed are “Socialist” countries. They just take the role of government more seriously, providing for the public good.

It might also be worth noting that, in 2023, UnitedHealth Group donated $792,500 via PAC contributions to federal political campaigns. Roughly 54% of those PAC contributions went to Republican candidates and 45% went to Democrats.

It also spent an even more substantial amount of PAC funds on In-State campaigns all across the U.S.. This was divided up between individual candidates, party contributions, and ballot measures.

And, in 2024, UnitedHealth Group (according to its filing with the U.S. Senate) dedicated $6.85 Million toward lobbying efforts, above and beyond Millions in PAC spending. Think about that for just a moment. This Corporation receives most of its revenue from Federal Subsidies. And then it spends a small portion of that revenue to support the campaigns and political parties that ensure it keeps getting that money.

It’s easy to spend that kind of money when a company brings in a net income of $14.4 Billion (which was UnitedHealth’s lowest profit margin since 2019), a number heavily impacted by the Billions they spent recovering from a cyberattack on one of their claims processing subsidiaries. With everything adjusted accordingly, they proudly claimed a record high profit of $25.7 Billion for last year.

Spending $6.85 Million through lobbyists and millions more through PAC contributions isn’t a challenge when you have that kind of profit involved. The amount spent on corporate lobbying was, after all, only 0.048% of the net profit.

Of course, UnitedHealth Group has already dedicated $3.37 Million toward lobbying efforts so far in 2025, so they’re hardly skimping on graft despite it not being an election year.

While the industry rakes in massive profits, it’s happy to return the favor by lining the pockets of politicians and political parties across the political spectrum, all to ensure it has its interests taken care of.

If you can look at this and think it’s fine, while Single-Payer Healthcare would be too costly, you’re not only missing the point, but you’re being intellectually dishonest.