FixHealthCarePolicy

The Senate Health Bill: Higher Taxes from Harry Reid

In order to pay for a massive health care bill (H.R. 3590), Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) creates a host of new taxes. These taxes will total $370.2 billion in the next ten years, and many of the taxes will start being collected in 2010, even as the economy continues to struggle.

The most shocking tax increase is a payroll tax increase that will permanently sever the link between the Medicare Payroll tax and its contributions to Medicare. This payroll tax increase of .5% on earnings above $200,000 for singles and $250,000 for joint couples will contribute money to the general fund for health care instead of directly for Medicare payments.

This change means that Medicare taxes are no longer solely dedicated to social insurance and safeguarding Medicare. Instead, Medicare payroll taxes will be used for other government programs. It is ironic, that the shift emerges from the liberals as they have long been worried about turning social insurance programs into welfare programs that redistribute wealth. The Reid payroll tax is a huge step down the road of using social insurance payroll taxes as regular taxes to transfer income. (more…)

Tags: double digit unemployment, Medicare, Obama Health Care Plan, payroll tax, taxes

The Senate Health Bill: How the Mandates Kill Jobs and Punish Poor Workers

Last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released his giant version of the Senate health care bill, H.R. 3590.

A first look at the bill – which is 2,074 pages long – shows yet another attempt to use taxes to punish uninsured Americans and punish companies that hire workers from low-income families, especially single parents. If you wanted to punish the poor and kill the job prospects of people who need jobs the most, this would be an effective way to do it.

The Individual Mandate. First, there is the “individual responsibility” provision in Section 1501 (pages 320-340). This would require anyone who fails to obtain a qualifying health plan – with a benefit package to be defined later by bureaucrats – to pay an annual tax penalty of $750 per adult family member and $375 per child, with a maximum penalty of $2,250 per family. These penalties will be phased in from 2014 to 2016 and then indexed for inflation, which means they are likely to increase nearly every year. These taxes are fixed amounts based on family size, not income. (more…)

Tags: double digit unemployment, employer mandates, individual mandates, Obama Health Care Plan

The Five Flaws of the Reid Health Bill

We’re still pouring over Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) just released health care overhaul, but the major outlines of the bill are no different than the policy train wreck the House passed earlier this month.

The five major flaws of both the Pelosi and Reid Bills are:

1. A New Public Plan. Both the House and Senate bills would create a new government-run health care plan — a so-called public plan — intended to “compete” with private insurers in a new health insurance exchange. The result: widespread erosion of private insurance and substantial consolidation of federal control over health care through the exchange. Congress is incapable of guaranteeing the American people a level playing field for competition between the government plans and private health plans. As the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recently certified, what many have already concluded, millions of Americans will lose their existing employer-based coverage. (more…)

Tags: double digit unemployment, employer mandates, individual mandates, Medicaid, Obama Health Care Plan, public option, trillion dollar deficits

Heal the Economy, Start Over on Health Care Reform

As the economy sputters and falters the questions coming up time and again is: What should Obama do? What can Congress do?

They’ve tried spending their way to prosperity and as today’s jobs numbers show, it didn’t work. 3.5 million jobs lost since Obama took office and an unemployment rate that shot up to 10.2 percent is damning evidence, turning the propaganda ploy of arguing for 600,000 stimulus-created jobs into a brazen farce.

They’ve tried to play Washington games with certain sectors and it didn’t work. Cash for clunkers gave car sales a quick pop, but much of it went to imports and in any event it evaporated as quickly as it appeared. Whatever help the first-time homebuyer tax credit provided the housing market is now spent.

Forget what failed in the past, what can they do now? Apropos the health care vote scheduled in the House for Saturday: First, do no harm. (more…)

Tags: cap and trade, cash for clunkers, double digit unemployment, green jobs, Obama Health Care Plan, Obama's failed stimulus

House Democrat: Pelosi Plan Raises Taxes And Funds Abortion

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) tells the New York Times:

The worst thing we could do in a recession is raise taxes, and this bill does just that. … Finally, I do not believe that the possibility for taxpayer-funded abortion has been clearly and emphatically removed from this legislation.

Boren is dead on. The House bill raises taxes by $700 billion at a time when our unemployment rate is already 10.2%.

And contrary to the President’s promise, the current House bill also enables taxpayer funding for elective abortions.

No wonder Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refuses to let House Democrats go home and listen to their constituents before voting on her health bill.

Tags: double digit unemployment, Obama Health Care Plan, taxpayer funded abortion

How the Pelosi Plan Kills Jobs

Today the Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that despite all of the Obama administration’s job creation claims, unemployment has risen to 10.2%. Instead of focusing on job creation, the left in Congress continues to pursue other priorities like their $1.5 trillion health care plan which is partially finance by job killing employer mandates. See chart below:

A recent study by the Kaufman Foundation found that small businesses have led America out of its last seven recessions, generating about two of every three new jobs during a recovery. But as Heritage’s John Ligon explains, Pelosi care discourages small business hiring at a time when government should be getting out of the way:

Health care reform cannot ignore how such legislation’s employer coverage mandates would negatively impact small businesses. The Pelosi plan eliminates the exemption for businesses with 25-49 workers created in the Baucus plan, and it would also impose new marginal penalties on small firms with 25 or fewer workers. This creates a punitive cost for firms, which significantly raises the costs for businesses on the margin.

Establishing disincentives for small firms to grow would lead to a slower, less robust economy–and labor market. Altering these incentive structures is harmful to small businesses and the way they allocate labor. Federal health care reform legislation, therefore, should avoid creating steep new marginal costs relating to business growth–particularly in terms of wages and worker compensation.

Tags: double digit unemployment, employer mandates, Obama Health Care Plan, small business