No, I am not going to blog about the proposed cost of nearly $1 trillion over 10 years to provide coverage to most of the uninsured, nor the more than $400 billion in new taxes and a half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts to pay for this new entitlement program that is certain to increase the cost of insurance and reduce the quality of our medical care. (Sidebar: Most of the uninsured will be covered, but not all. As many as 24 million people would remain uninsured in 2019, many of them eligible but still can't afford the premiums. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Wait a minute, I thought the objective was to make sure that everyone gets health insurance. What the heck is going on when this entitlement is going to break the bank - fisc - and people still are without health insurance? Stupidity reins on! It's all about the control and power over our lives.)
I want to discuss the tax impact on the middle-class family. The Senate version (cloak in secrecy) has the middle-class family of four making $66,000 would have to pay about 10 percent of its income in premiums, not counting co-payments and deductibles. What happen to the, then, Presidential Candidate Obama espousing that the middle-class family would not be paying higher taxes under his administration? Good question! Your taxes are going up, either directly or indirectly through higher insurance premiums. (Get used to it, Gary, it is going to happen.)
The Congressional Budget Office says the bill wouldn't have a major effect on premiums under employer plans, now about $13,000 a year. But wait a minute, the Senate version slaps a 40 percent tax on insurance plans with premiums above $8,500 for individual coverage and $23,000 for family plans, among other levies. So, if I am paying $13,000, as an individual, for my health coverage, I am going to have to pay a tax of $1,800 [$13,000 - $8,500 x (.40] in addition to my insurance premiums. You gotta be kidding me! I wish I was, but I am not. Also, let's say that I am a small business person, incorporated as a LLC or Sub-Chapter S, the House version imposes a 5.4% income tax surcharge on individuals making more than $500,000 and families earning more than $1 million. That, of course, is in addition to one's health insurance premiums. The rest of the financing for this monstrosity would come mainly from cuts in federal payments to insurers, hospitals, home health care agencie, and other medical providers serving Medicare. And, our elected officials have the nerve to say that quality of health care will not suffer.
The Senate version would make plans certified by the federal employee system available nationwide to individuals, bringing competition to states in which one or two large insurers now control the market. That is not a bad idea. However, why don't they make such competition available to all such plans? The downside to this component part is that those individuals currently covered under this plan are looking at hefty premium increases next year. Individual coverage under the federal employee system is estimated to be going up 15% next year, and that is not the increase for family coverage, which is yet to be determined. Can anyone say "screwed" to those federal employees currently under this system? I thought you could!
The other new idea under the Senate version is to allow individuals between the age 55 to 64, one of the groups now most at risk for losing coverage during our current economic debacle, to buy into Medicare. That sounds great, right? However, how many in this group would be able to afford to pay $7,600 a year for this type of coverage, not counting out-of-pocket expenditures for deductibles and co-payments?
I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of this egalitarian movement. Do we need health reform? You bet! But, not to the point that it bankrupts the federal fisc.
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