Taxing Healthcare Benefits - It's coming

It's exhausting to continue the fight against the government takeover of healthcare. No matter what speech, sound bites or quote you hear, the one thing that is clear: the government, White House and Congress, intend on pushing a socialized universal health insurance program into our lives.

The current bill confirmed many of the rumors about taxation and penalties (I covered them here: http://brandon7221.blogspot.com/2009/10/cram-ram-healthcare.html )

No the evolution of the healthcare reform digs deeper and sharper.

Under the original proposal, a 35% excise tax would be imposed on employer-provided coverage in which premiums exceed $8,000 a year for individual coverage and $21,000 for family coverage. This would include premiums for medical, dental and vision care; employer contributions to health reimbursement arrangements and health savings accounts; and employee contributions.

Tax us for having good insurance.

Oh wait, it gets worse!

Under the revised Baucus package, the excise tax is modified in several ways. First, the tax would be increased to 40%. In addition, the $8,000 and $21,000 thresholds would be increased by $750 for individual coverage and $2,000 for family coverage for retirees covered in employer plans who are age 55 and older.

NOW they will tax the employer NOT you or me!

How long will we have employer health insurance?

Well there's this amendment, proposed by Sen. John Kerry, requiring employers with 26 or more employees to offer health care coverage, pay at least 60% of the premiums for individual and family coverage, and abide by certain other requirements. Those that fail to do so would be assessed an annual fine of $750 for each full-time employee not covered and $375 for each part-time employee not covered.

Is your head spinning yet? It should be.

I'm sick of hearing and writing about healthcare, but we are under siege. We are being forced onto a government plan, going to lose our benefits at work, or worse, much much worse, watch small businesses go bankrupt trying to keep pace.

Cram & Ram Healthcare

Move over CAP and Trade, here comes Healthcare Reform. The midnight addition of 300 pages to the Cap and Trade Bill is nothing compared to the Clock & Dagger tactics by the Senate to help push a healthcare bill through.

Committee Chairman Max Baucus "We are now closer than ever before to finally passing reform that will offer security to those who have coverage and affordable insurance to those who don't."

Among the changes to this final draft(see link below):

• Bill would impose a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans in excess of $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families.


• An amendment approved on a 13-10 party line vote raises those levels for retirees and high-risk professions, such as coal miners, to $9,850 and $26,000 respectively.


• states to negotiate deals with healthcare plans for those on low incomes. This NOT a lift or change to the interstate restrictions that limit insurance companies to certain states.


• set a $500,000 limit on the amount of executive pay that health insurance companies can deduct from taxable income. Cap on executive pay (put in by Blanche Lincoln)
• would bar insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions


• exempt more lower income people from the requirement to purchase insurance and delay implementation of penalties for failure to purchase insurance.
• bill would have allowed hardship waivers only if the cost of insurance exceeded 10 percent of a person's income. The amendment lowered that threshold to 8 percent.
• bill eventually would impose a maximum tax penalty of $950 for individuals and $1,900 for families that fail to purchase insurance
• allow states to negotiate with insurers to arrange coverage for people with incomes slightly higher than the cutoff for Medicaid, the government healthcare program for the poor
• committee's bill would create nonprofit insurance cooperatives to create competition -- CO-OPS are an important codeword for government run "public options"

The hold ups have been resolved as fees and excise taxes are negotiated to sound less. Don't forget that we WILL ALL get a tax increase next year as the Bush tax cuts will all expire.

They brag about "lowering the penalty" - penalty?

This "penalty" is NOT a tax though. Right?

Remember when this process would take months and the predictions were maybe the end of the year. I've railed over and over again on how the House is ready to go. I truly expected the Nancy Pelosi and the House to push a bill forward and pressure the Senate to follow suit.

Instead, we heard how the Senate Finance Commitee were voting against the public option, killing the healthcare reform - tons of misinformation.

The end game is still the same: one payer system, a government takeover of healthcare. If this were false then why ignore the bankruptcy of Medicaid and Medicare? If this is so urgent, then why is it now effective until 2013 (right after the re-election)

I only provided one link to paste many of these bullet points presented but you can google up all of the comments from these meetings. We don't know if we are getting to review this bill, so I encourage you to call your House Rep and Senators and DEMAND this bill gets posted on the internet.

DEMAND discussion and ask questions. This is NOT over, so we need to stay vigilent.

This only clarifies the fact that they WILL require everyone to have insurance and there will be a fee/penalty (but definitely is NOT a tax) for NOT having insurance.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-HealthcareReform/idUSTRE58O6C020091002