Senate Finance’s Health Care Bill: Votes and Hidden Taxes
Thursday, October 8, 2009CNN reports: “The Senate Finance Committee will vote on its long-awaited health care bill next Tuesday, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on the Senate floor Thursday.”
Charles Krauthammer on Fox News All Stars last night did a good job in describing some of the presentational ploys used in the bill’s depiction by Congress. Via National Review Online, The Corner:
Two items here. One of them is the $120 billion assumed of income from what are called “fees” of the big players in health care — the health insurers, the drug companies, the guys who do diagnostics and who produce the medical equipment.
The fee is a tax, and the tax, $120 billion, is going to end up out of your pocket and mine, because every penny of it will be in higher insurance, higher costs for drugs, for stents — any kind of medical devices — and for diagnostics. Everybody will pay.
But it’s hidden. It is a cowardly way to do a tax. You do it on the industry and it is passed on.
Secondly, there are individual mandates. People are going to be shelling out a huge amount every year on insurance, and those who don’t are going to have to pay a fine, also a tax, but under another name.
There are huge costs in here, which are all hidden, and that’s why it looks OK.
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