ABSTRACT
Health care costs have a far lesser impact on higher income people than on poor and working-class people. This is due to the fundamentally unjust character of the two major ways in which health care has been financed: out-of-pocket payments and private health insurance premiums. To address the problem of equity in government health care financing, the entire tax structure of the country must be examined. With the exception of the Health Security Act, which would derive 50 per cent of its income from general revenues, most congressional national health insurance proposals rely principally upon the payroll deduction. Payroll deductions in national health insurance proposals are either compulsory employer-employee payments to private insurance companies or traditional social security. The poverty which is inherent in maldistributed wealth is a major cause of death and disability in the United States. National health insurance will constitute another arena in which money is transferred from poorer to richer people.
