Supposedly the Senate’s version of ObamaCare was written by Finance Chairman Max Baucus, but we’re beginning to wonder if the true authors were Abbott and Costello. The vaudeville logic of the plan is that Congress will tax health care to subsidize people to buy health care that new taxes and regulation make more expensive.
Look no further than the $40 billion “fee” that Mr. Baucus wants to impose on medical devices and diagnostic equipment. Device manufacturers would pay $4 billion a year in excise taxes, divvied up among them based on U.S. sales. This translates to an annual income tax surcharge anywhere from 10% to 30%, depending on the corporation….
This new tax will eventually be passed through to patients, increasing health-care costs. It will also harm innovation, taking a big bite out of the research and development that leads to medical advancements.
Gosh. I wish they hadn’t held back. I wonder what they really think?
There was an AP write up about this plan in the Sioux Falls paper on Monday (the same day I mailed in my check for quarterly taxes) that was really ironic. It said in one part of the article that a goal was to increase Medicaid, but in the “taxes that will be levied by the bill” section, it was going to take out money from Medicare and Medicaid to help pay for the bill. So, to expand Medicaid, we’re apparently going to tax and cut funding for Medicaid. I physically snorted and said to my wife, “Do these people live on another planet?”
My other comment was exactly the reaction of this article. Massive taxes and levies on basically every facet of the health care field (pharmacies, providers, insurers, etc.). Basic economics here, folks. Cost of doing business goes up, cost to consumer goes up. And Mr. Baucus thinks a little under one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) over ten years is going to remotely pay for such an exorbitant increase to everything related to the health care field? One trillion dollars might get you 2 to 3 years paying for this system at best, and that’s being extremely conservative in long term pricing estimates.
This plan had a few interesting ideas, but the massive mental hoops you have to jump through to rationale the idea that this is going to be a self-sufficient plan in terms of funding is patently laughable.