CANDIDATES PAY HEALTH CARE LIP SERVICE LESS RHETORIC, MORE STRAIGHT TALK IS NEEDED TO REFORM INSURANCE.

Byline: R.D. Skidmore Local View

DOMESTIC humanitarian causes are the banner candidates wave to gather votes and momentum to place themselves in office. Today's issues are education and health care. Both are important and both contribute to economic growth.

Candidates want voters to view the world through their eyes. Their message is ``. . . if you see life my way, you'll elect me, and I can do good things to you.''

This season's talk is now ``health care insurance'' when six or seven years ago it was ``nationalized health care.'' Who shall we save with health care insurance? The children again, and the 1 percent of seniors who need help.

The rhetorical mantra is ``did you know that there are 40 million children who do not have health care insurance?'' Well, no, I didn't. But I do know that to have health care insurance you have to either work for a company that provides the insurance plan as a part of employee benefits, or purchase insurance on your own, or pay for the health care costs directly.

Most health care insurance benefit plans require employees to pay some of the costs out of their own pockets already.

What are we to think when a candidate says, ``I will make health care insurance my top priority''? Are they saying that they want to (1) put all children to work so they are covered by company health care plans, or (2) make health care insurance affordable for children to purchase their own plans, or (3) have children pay their own health care costs or (4) nationalize incrementally health care so the taxpayer covers the health care insurance costs? But then parents are responsible for their children, not government.

The rhetoric we hear leads one to believe that all of us should have health care insurance. Of course, health care insurance is not a bad thing, and companies are set up to offer health insurance. These are for-profit companies, and health care insurance is a business, a profitable business.

When everyone purchases a health care insurance plan, they are increasing the profit line of that company. With increased profits are increased taxes that government receives when everyone purchases their health care insurance.

Nice deal. With the goal for everyone to have health care insurance, health care insurance companies increase profits, and government increases tax revenues from the increased health care purchasing and profits. But no tax relief for people who still pay some or all of their own health care costs.

Small-business owners and working American families who pay medical expenses from their income resources must pay income tax on the first 7.5 percent of their incomes spent on medical costs. This is for their doctor visits and medicines.

Working American families must spend more than 7.5 percent of their income on medical costs before they are eligible for any deduction of medical costs? Yes, and if that family has taxable earnings of $35,000 per year they must first spend $2,625 in health care before they may begin to realize any tax relief on the next dollar spent for health care.

Since that family is at a 15 percent tax rate, the federal tax on that $2,625 health expense is $394. That is an additional $394 in increased health cost confiscated through taxation from the American family, making it more difficult for Americans to provide for themselves.

We hear candidates and Congress wrangle over children being able to have access to health care insurance, but Congress took away the ability of American families to provide health care for themselves through taxation.

Surely this must be unconscionable.

Corporations can expend (deduct) the payments for health care provided employees whether it is insurance payments or direct payments to health care providers. But the American worker and the American small-business owner do not posses this fundamental right. The average American taxpayer and small-business owner must be able to deduct 100 percent of their health care expenses from taxation. Whether that be payments for insurance plans or direct payments for health care costs.

Instead of tax manipulation gimmickry, would it not be simpler to allow Americans to receive the full benefit of the health care expenses they incur? Of course, it would.

On Schedule A, Congress only needs to remove the medical expense limitations that rob Americans from providing for themselves the benefits of health care.

Americans are able to make wiser choices when handling their financial resources if those resources are left with the earners and not confiscated through taxation.

My suggestion to the candidates is to restore to the American taxpayer the ability to provide health care for themselves without the penalty of taxation. There will be no need for earned income credits, no take-backs, no give-backs, no puppeteering manipulations. Americans will be able to fairly provide for themselves, as is their right.

How can candidates publicly deny the average American family the ability to provide health care for themselves? Let those candidates rise up to their constituency and say: ``No, you cannot have the tax benefit of health care, we will tax your health dollars because that is fair, and you have to pay your fair share.'' How long will they last?