Romney Should Release Tax Returns - And So Should Others

It it beyond me why Mitt Romney refuses to release more of his federal tax information.  So far he has only released part of his 2010 tax return, withholding a separate document with the IRS that provides additional details on overseas bank holdings.  The part of the 2010 that he did show revealed that he had a Swiss bank account, but the Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts that is required when such an account is held would show more details concerning the Swiss bank account.  He hasn't released this yet, and seems to be refusing to do so.  Romney says that he will release his 2011 return, but will go no further. 

It seems to me that to quell any suspicions he should reveal more than two years, and he should also make sure to hand over any documentation concerning the Swiss bank account.

Should there be a law requiring a certain number of years of disclosure?  Probably every president as well as members of the Congress and Senate should have to reveal at least three years of tax information when running for office, and should have to produce such information on an annual basis while in office.  Recently members of Congress were asked to reveal tax information by McClatchy Newspapers.  Only 17 of 536 members released their most recent tax information.  This is a disgrace!

By the way, there's a site where you can see tax information from different candidates - 

http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/PresidentialTaxReturns/

Barack Obama's returns are there from 2000 on.  Mitt Romney's 2010 and 2011 returns are there as well. Take a look. 

Why Are Medical Costs So High In The United States?

The United States has the highest costs for medical care of any other developed nation, and yet we do not get better health care for that cost. We are not sicker, we don't go to the doctor more often, and yet our costs are sky high, and rising every year. It is projected that we will pay $13,708 dollars per capita by 2020, or 19.8% of our GDP.

In research I did for on my article  “Why Are Medical Costs So High In The U.S.A.?”,  I found that there are four major reasons of these escalating costs:

1. We pay doctors more in the United States – in 2008, general doctors make an average of $186,582 as compared to Australia at $92,844 and France at $95,585. There is an even wider gap among specialists – the average in the U.S. Is $442,450 next to Britain at $324,138, with all other countries coming in at less than $210,000.
2. Drugs are more expensive in the U.S. - In fact we pay 60% more in this country than our European peer countries. Why? Perhaps the power of lobbyists in Washington has much to do with the lack of regulations regarding these prices and with not allowing importing drugs from other countries.
3. Administrative Costs are more – in fact, for every office based physician there are 2.2 administrative personnel, more than the number of nurses, clinical assistants, and technical staff put together.
4. We overuse diagnostic tests – The overuse of diagnostic tests has been estimated to cost about $250 billion dollars a year. This is 10% of the entire cost of health care. Doctors may overuse diagnostic tests because of fear of litigation.

What can be done about these excessive costs? Solutions I've seen have included

1. Encouraging more care from primary physicians rather than specialists
2. Allowing drugs to be imported
3. Better negotiation of drug prices by medicare
4. Adopting more uniform procedures for payment and billing
5. Have centralized database of electronic records
6. Tort Reform to prevent frivolous law suits
7. Promote wellness and preventative medicine

Some of these cost cutting solutions will be introduced under the Affordable Care Act. It has provisions in it to encourage wellness, such as discounted premiums for participants in wellness programs. It also introduces regulations to streamline administrative costs through the use of electronic record keeping. There will be a 15 member Independent Medicare Payment Advisory Board whose task is to study ways to contain Medicare costs and offer solutions. These solutions are supposed to reduce the growth rate of medicare costs while still maintaining or enhancing beneficiary access to quality care. Many are critical of this panel saying that they will ration out health care to seniors and cut access to services. However, it states in the Affordable Care Act that the board is not allowed to offer solutions that ration health care, restrict benefits, raise beneficiary cost sharing or raise premiums. Hopefully their solutions will help bring down the unbearably high cost of medical care, and serve as a model for the rest of the health care industry.