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John Edwards says we need to raise taxes to fix health care, and you can bet that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will eventually say so too.
Their red-blooded Republican foes will counter that raising taxes is always and everywhere evil, because it hurts the economy.
Start with the fact that business now spends a stunning $500 billion a year, or 4 percent of GDP, on health-care benefits. Let's say we shifted that cost to government - that's right, relieved business of it entirely - and, to make matters simple, combined it with other public funds to give citizens a voucher with which they could buy a private health plan.
To pay for this without boosting the deficit, we'd raise taxes by an identical amount - not on business, of course, but on taxpayers broadly, via various gas or carbon taxes that would have the salutary side effect of helping cure our energy and environmental woes.
CNN
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