Thread: A Comparison of Tax Changes in House, Senate Health Bills

Great idea, create a multi-$billion tax on the most successful drug companies in the world. (in terms of # of life-saving medicines)
Don't want them spending too much on research and development.
Same goes for medical device manufacturers.

Originally Posted by iamwhatiseem

Great idea, create a multi-$billion tax on the most successful drug companies in the world. (in terms of # of life-saving medicines)
Don't want them spending too much on research and development.
Same goes for medical device manufacturers.

IMO Not to worry about taxes ! Instead plan to put onesself in such a position that if it ratchets up to mean your hurting in respect to being able to enjoy the life style chosen it would mean total collapse of the entire system and someone would come along and fix things.

Originally Posted by iamwhatiseem

Great idea, create a multi-$billion tax on the most successful drug companies in the world. (in terms of # of life-saving medicines)
Don't want them spending too much on research and development.
Same goes for medical device manufacturers.

Inevitably, higher taxes at the corporate level will mean higher prices for those products that they produce. Liberals are so damned stupid when it comes to economics, that they believe higher taxes at the corporate level will mean reduced profits to the corporations. I used to believe that they were economically ignorant, but I have come to the conclusion that they do not have the capacity to learn in this regard, and so they are instead, economically stupid.

Originally Posted by skeptic1

IMO Not to worry about taxes ! Instead plan to put onesself in such a position that if it ratchets up to mean your hurting in respect to being able to enjoy the life style chosen it would mean total collapse of the entire system and someone would come along and fix things.

Who exactly do you believe "would come along and fix things"? If government, why would you believe that the entity that caused "total collapse of the entire system" could somehow "fix things" after that fact?

Originally Posted by iamwhatiseem

Great idea, create a multi-$billion tax on the most successful drug companies in the world. (in terms of # of life-saving medicines)
Don't want them spending too much on research and development.
Same goes for medical device manufacturers.

Punish the achievers... it's the liberal way.

My question is, if this bill is going to bend the cost curve down, thus lowering the deficit, as we have been told ad naseum...why do we need to raise taxes at all? Could it be because this bill actually INCREASES government healthcare costs dramatically and that any supposed deficit reduction (projections themselves built on presumptions every honest broker admits are flat out lies) are due entirely to higher taxes?

Originally Posted by Marcus1124

My question is, if this bill is going to bend the cost curve down, thus lowering the deficit, as we have been told ad naseum...why do we need to raise taxes at all? Could it be because this bill actually INCREASES government healthcare costs dramatically and that any supposed deficit reduction (projections themselves built on presumptions every honest broker admits are flat out lies) are due entirely to higher taxes?

very good question and I have an opinion on that, compliments of Mr. Foster chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services;



$222 Billion, Ho Hum
Another warning that reform 'bends the cost curve'—up.

Among the astonishing things about the ObamaCare debate—or lack thereof—is that Washington is inundated with warnings about the destructiveness of this plan, and it doesn't matter. The agency that runs Medicare rung the latest alarm bell on Friday, and good luck finding any media mention.

Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reports that under his analysis national health spending will rise under the bills by $222 billion over the next 10 years. In other words, ObamaCare really does "bend the cost curve"—up.


Even that estimate exists only on paper, as Mr. Foster has the honesty to admit. Because "most of the coverage provisions would be in effect for only six of the 10 years of the budget period, the cost estimates shown in this memorandum do not represent a full 10-year cost for the proposed legislation," he writes. The report is punctuated by phrases like "unrealistic" and "doubtful," and Mr. Foster adds that "the scope and magnitude of these changes are such that few precedents exist for use in estimation."

That $222 billion is a net figure, even after accounting for the fact that most of the newly insured—18 million people—will be dumped into Medicaid, "where provider payment rates are well below average." And for the fact that ObamaCare is "paid for" only in the sense that Medicare's payments to doctors are assumed in the bill to be cut by more than 20% this spring and even deeper after that, which will never happen in practice.

Mr. Foster adds that other planned Medicare cuts would damage doctors and hospitals: "Over time, a sustained reduction in payment updates, based on productivity expectations that are difficult to attain, would cause Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than, and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers' costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries." This is how price controls would work in practice, even as Medicare has hit its spending targets only four times in the last 25 years.

He says many providers will be forced to stop accepting patients who are insured by the government, as opposed to those who have private coverage "with relatively attractive payment rates." The resulting two-tier health-care system "should be considered plausible and even probable initially." As for the White House's promise that it will reduce health spending painlessly by cutting "waste," Mr. Foster isn't buying it. He writes that "we find the language as it now reads is not sufficiently specific to provide estimates."

The report also calls out the new entitlement program for long-term care, which is included only because it will start collecting premiums five years before it starts paying benefits. In return for this accounting gimmick, the fisc will be saddled with a program that Mr. Foster estimates will be bankrupt by 2025. It may be sooner than that, however, as the program will tend to attract sicker people, presenting the possibility of "a significant risk of failure as a result of adverse selection by participants."

Studies like Mr. Foster's have been coming left and right but they do nothing to stop the political march off the cliff. Welfare reform would never have had a chance if even a single analysis like this one had come out before the vote. But somehow Democrats get a pass from the press corps and political class because—why?

ObamaCare Will Increase Health-Care Costs - WSJ.com
Among the astonishing things about the ObamaCare debate—or lack thereof—is that Washington is inundated with warnings about the destructiveness of this plan, and it doesn't matter. The agency that runs Medicare rung the latest alarm bell on Friday, and good luck finding any media mention.

Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reports that under his analysis national health spending will rise under the bills by $222 billion over the next 10 years. In other words, ObamaCare really does "bend the cost curve"—up.