Fix Health Care Policy

In a recent article for MarketWatch, Andrea Coombes writes, “Whatever their opinion of the health-care reform law, wealthy Americans have a lot of money at risk in the Supreme Court’s coming decision on the law’s constitutionality.”

Yes, the rich will pay higher taxes under Obamacare. But they aren’t the only ones. Obamacare raises taxes by more than $500 billion in a decade, and a number of these will hit Americans at all levels of the income scale. The specific tax hikes Coombes describes are initially intended to impact just the wealthy, but it won’t remain that way for long.

(Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: higher taxes, ObamaCare, Supreme Court decision, Taxmageddon

Passage of Obamacare will have negative consequences for practically all Americans. However, it is the nation’s senior citizens who will get the short end of the stick after enactment of the President’s health care agenda. In a recent paper, Heritage health policy expert Robert Moffit, Ph.D., lays out the specific provisions of Obamacare that will hurt seniors:

– Less Choice. Obamacare will reduce payments to Medicare Advantage, likely decreasing benefits and causing approximately half of current participants to drop out. These seniors will have little choice but to go back to traditional Medicare, and buy a supplemental policy to cover Medicare’s big gaps in coverage. (more…)

Tags: coverage gap, higher taxes, Medicare Advantage cuts, Medicare payment cuts, ObamaCare, Side Effects

Small businesses will bear a significant burden under Obamacare. New regulations, mandates, taxes and numerous costs will impact how companies operate.

The National Federation of Independent Business counted all of these new requirements and came up with 25 ways the new health care law changes life for business owners over the next 10 years. Its video puts some perspective on what’s to come in the years ahead.

Earlier this week Heritage’s John Ligon revealed four ways Obamacare penalizes small businesses: higher health care costs, an ineffective small business tax credit, higher regulation compliance costs, and Medicare taxes on “flow-through” and investment income.

Medium-sized businesses between 50 and 199 employees don’t escape Obamacare’s taxes either. Ligon estimates that employees will ultimately pay the biggest price with lower wages, discontinued hiring or even loss of employment.

Tags: higher taxes, lower wages, National Federation of Independent Business, ObamaCare, small business tax credit

Another day, two new polls showing the American people are strongly against the health care plan President Barack Obama will sign into law today. According to CNN, 59% of Americans oppose President Obama’s plan. And according to CBS News, 48% of Americans oppose the plan (with 33% in strong opposition) compared to only 37% who support it (with only 13% in strong support). Digging deeper into the CBS poll, we find that 76% of Americans disapprove of how Congress is handling its job on health care, 46% think Congress has spent too much time on health care, and 49% believe the rules and procedures used in Congress to get the current health care bill passed have been mostly unfair.

But the leftist majorities in Congress just do not care what the American people think. Today, the Senate will press forward with work on the proposed “fix-it” bill through the reconciliation process. You may have thought it was impossible to make the policy and process of Obamacare even worse, but that is exactly what this reconciliation bill does: (more…)

Tags: abuse of process, higher deficits, higher taxes, ObamaCare, public opposition, reconciliation bill, Senate Health Bill

President Obama keeps rolling out the tax hikes. In his budget released earlier this month, excluding the tax hikes he assumed to pay for health care, he called for $1.3 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade. Now in his recently released health reform plan, he calls for even more tax increases. Today, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) released their analysis of the tax increases in the President’s plan. According to the JCT, the plan will raise taxes by another $414 billion between 2010 and 2019. The taxes the President Obama proposed hiking are as follows (the year the tax kicks in and the amount the tax will raise between 2010 and 2019 are in parentheses):

– Require information reporting on payments to corporations (2011 – $17.1 billion)

– Exclusion of unprocessed fuels from the cellulosic biofuel produce credit (immediately upon passage – $23.9 billion)

– Codify economic substance doctrine and impose penalties for underpayments (immediately upon passage – $4.9 billion)

– Increase Hospital Insurance portion of the payroll tax and apply it to investment income for families earning more than $250,000 a year ($200,000 for single filers) (2012 – $183.6)

– Excise tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans valued at more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families (2018 – $32.7 billion)*

– Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs (2011 – $33.4 billion)*

– Impose excise tax on manufacturers and importers of medical devices (2012 – $20 billion)*

– Impose annual fee on health insurance companies (2014 – $59.5 billion)*

– Excise tax on indoor tanning services (2010 – $2.7 billion)*

– Limit Health Savings Accounts (HSA) (2011 – $5.0 billion)*

– Increase taxes on unqualified distributions from HSAs (2011 – $1.4 billion)*

– Limit Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) (2014 – $11.4 billion)*

– Eliminate deduction of expenses allocable to Medicare Part D subsidy (2012 – $2.6 billion)*

– Limit deductions for medical expenses (2013 – $15.2 billion)*

– Higher taxes on compensation above $500,000 paid to officers, employees, directors and service providers of covered health insurance providers (2013 – $0.6 billion)

– Higher taxes on certain health organizations (2010 – $0.4 billion)*

(more…)

Tags: Cadillac tax, health savings accounts, higher taxes, Hospital Insurance, Joint Committee on Taxation, ObamaCare, President's proposal