The health-care bill, which is President Obama’s top domestic priority, would extend insurance to about 30 million people who now lack it, expand the reach of Medicaid for the poor, and impose new rules on health insurance companies. It would cost about $871 billion over 10 years, but raise more than that in new taxes and fees and cuts in Medicare. Democrats win the vote 60-39 over Republican objections.With the economy struggling to break the chains of a job-destroying recession. Under Obama-care, Americans will be forced to buy government-approved health insurance and anyone earning a middle class wage will have to pay for it out of their own pocket. Federal subsidies will only be provided for people who are not offered coverage by their employer and earn below the 400 percent poverty level. Families whose employers drop their plan will be forced to buy it on their own – at a cost of over $15,000 dollars a year. “The Senate health care bill gives employers two powerful incentives to stop offering health insurance coverage to their workers,” writes Terry Jeffrey“First, if an employer does offer coverage, its lower-wage workers will lose the federal insurance subsidy they would otherwise get.Secondly, if an employer does not offer coverage, the $750-per-worker fine it faces will be far less than the premiums it would pay if it did offer coverage.”Families struggling in this deep recession who earn a combined total greater than $88,200 and don’t have their health care covered by their employer will be hit with a mandatory annual fee of about $15,000 according to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the final Senate health-care bill.There is nothing voluntary about Obama’s health-care mandate:The Senate has dismissed concerns over the individual insurance mandate and the tax penalty imposed on those who don’t meet that requirement. If you refuse to pay the penalty or you refuse to provide any information on your health-care status on your tax return, you will face the prospect of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. This is supposedly a “voluntary mandate” and the IRS can’t do anything against you if you refuse to pay the penalty. They claim that because page 340 (A) and (B) of the bill waives criminal prosecution of taxpayers and says that no liens or levies can be filed on the taxpayer’s property. That claim is wrong.Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) itself made clear that the financing of health-care reform is based in substantial part on generating $167 billion in “penalty payments” from individual taxpayers and employers.The IRS, which is known for its habit of disregarding court decisions that disagree with its interpretations of the law, may use audits and the ability to find problems in a taxpayer’s finances in areas totally unrelated to the health care mandate to force compliance with the mandate and coerce payment of the tax penalty imposed by Reid’s bill. according to The Heritage Foundation, The very idea of using the taxing powers of the state to force compliance with this law is one that should shock the conscience of everyone, even those who support “reforming” our health care system.Obama’s answer to the question posed by George Stephanopoulosin an interview, “Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money [to buy insurance], fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?’’“George,’’ chided Obama, “the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary . . . indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now.’’Merriam-Webster’s definition of “tax’’ – “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.’’One place to look to see what the universal coverage would do is the state of Massachusetts, about 200,000 state taxpayers remained uninsured in the beginning year of 2008, it hasn’t made insurance more affordable, Massachusetts has the highest health insurance premiums in the nation. It rose by 7.4 percent in 2007, 8-12 percent in 2008 and will expect to rise 9 percent this year who knows what 2010 will bring, according to Jeff Jacoby who’s article entitled Mandatory insurance: Yes, it’s a tax, addresses the promise Obama’s made not to raise taxes on any American family earning less than $230,000 a year, contradicts that by supporting legislation that would force every American to carry health insurance or pay a hefty penalty to the IRS.Some of the taxes that will be imposed on the public under the new health-care bill that has people taken back with concern: according to H.R. 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.Section 1501 – Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage – Individuals will be required to maintain health insurance. Those that do not will be assessed an annual tax penalty of $750. The tax penalty is scheduled to escalate in subsequent years. Consequently, Massachusetts residents that do not maintain health insurance will be assessed a tax at both the state and federal level.Section 9001 – Excise tax on high cost employer-sponsored health coverage – This provision levies an excise tax of 40 percent for any health coverage plan that is costs over $8,500 per year for single coverage and $23,000 per year for family coverage. Since this was protested vigorously by unions and public employees, the Senate caved and granted a massive concession. The tax is not levied on the individual receiving the tax free benefit, but is levied on the insurance company or plan administrators that provide the employee the benefit. How absurd is that?Section 9008 – Imposition of annual fee on branded prescription pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers – This piece of the legislation imposes a $2.3 billion excise tax on the pharmaceutical industry. The tax is allocated across the industry and is based on market share, not on income. This tax starts immediately and is non-deductible for the corporation being taxed. These companies will still be required to pay their federal income taxes.Section 9009 – Imposition of annual fee on medical device manufacturers and importers – This section imposes a $2 billion excise tax on the medical device industry. The fee is allocated across the industry based on market share, not on income. This tax starts immediately and is non-deductible for the corporation being taxed.Section 9010 – Imposition of annual fee on health insurance providers – Another excise tax. This one is assessed on the health insurance industry in the amount of $6.7 billion taxed out and is also based on market share. How can the imposition of $11 billion in excise taxes (section 9008, 9009 and 9010) on the health care industry reduce costs to consumers? Does anyone else suspect these companies will have to pass these costs over to consumers?Section 9013 – Modification of itemized deduction for medical expenses – For those incurring significant medical costs, your ability to deduct these expenses will be decreased. This legislation increases the adjusted gross income threshold for claiming an itemized deduction from 7.5 percent to 10 percent.Section 9015 – Additional hospital insurance tax on high-income taxpayers – This increases the Medicare tax on wages by 0.50 percent on individuals making in excess of $200,000 and married couples making over $250,000. This will be effective starting January 1, 2013. (As a side note, individual income taxes are already scheduled to increase in 2011, with the highest rate already increasing by 4.6 percent. This will be in addition to the tax increase as outlined here in Section 9015.)”Average premiums per policy in the non-group market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal,” according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO).
Posts Tagged ‘could’
Health-care bill passed 60-39 could mirror Canadian style rationing system
Saturday, February 20th, 2010FHA hospital mortgage insurance program health care trends and portfolio concentration could affect program stability : report to congressional committees
Saturday, February 20th, 2010Even if health bill passes soon, wait for reforms could be long
Thursday, February 18th, 2010The White House has a message for Americans suffering under today’s health insurance system: “Help is on the way.” But not as fast as you might think.Measured against the promises President Obama and congressional Democrats have made about health-care reform, the bill the Senate begins debating this week could be setting Americans up for disappointment: Some of the main reforms would not take place for several years, and even when they do, some observers say, the bill does too little to make sure they would be enforced.Until 2014, insurance companies could continue to deny coverage or charge higher premiums based on people’s medical history. Another highly touted reform — banning annual and lifetime limits on coverage — would take effect in 2010, but it would permit significant exceptions. Even with those rules in place, “there’s no power to really hold the insurance companies accountable,” said consumer advocate Betty Ahrens, executive director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network. “It’s toothless.”Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said the bill was a compromise. “This is not the legislation we would have written in a perfect world, but Senator Reid believes that this bill has the best chance possible to get the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster,” Manley said.The delay in implementing some key reforms contrasts with the urgency of Obama’s call for action.Although some changes might take years to implement, Obama said in July, “We shouldn’t have to wait a long time to make sure that people don’t lose their insurance because of a preexisting condition.”Delaying relief until 2014 means that Obama could face reelection — and Congress be transformed by two elections — before voters begin feeling the legislation’s full effect.It would also reduce the cost of the bill during the 10-year budget window measured by the Congressional Budget Office.Deferred until 2014 would be a federal mandate that everyone buy insurance, subsidies to help people with lower incomes pay for it, and the creation of marketplaces called exchanges, in which individuals and small businesses could comparison-shop for health plans.The bill would offer interim relief for some people with preexisting conditions by creating a temporary insurance plan just for them, but only people who have been uninsured for six months could join. White House health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle said the president was moving as quickly as possible. She said that the insurance industry cannot be forced to accept people irrespective of preexisting conditions until everyone is required to have insurance, and that the administration does not want such a requirement until the exchanges are up and running. A close reading of the bill reveals other surprises, like the section titled “No lifetime or annual limits,” which is intended to protect people from huge out-of-pocket expenses.Where annual benefits are concerned, the Senate bill bans only “unreasonable” limits. What that means is not spelled out; a Senate aide said the Treasury Department would set the standard.In addition, the bill says that certain health plans could continue to use annual and lifetime limits. As Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, interprets it, those potentially exempt from the ban include companies that self-insure, meaning they pay employee health benefits out of their own coffers, and businesses with more than 100 employees. Further, the prohibition on lifetime and annual limits applies only to limits “on the dollar value of benefits.”In the past, health plans have gotten around restrictions measured in dollars. In 1996, Congress passed a law that said employers could not set lower dollar limits on mental health coverage than on medical and surgical coverage. Many employers responded by adopting tighter limits on the number of mental health outpatient visits or hospital days, according to testimony the Government Accountability Office gave in 2000. Congress finally closed that loophole in 2008.In this bill, the Senate majority leader avoided an absolute ban on annual limits because that could drive up premiums, said a Reid aide who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. While a low annual dollar limit might be unreasonable, an annual limit of three attempts at in vitro fertilization might be reasonable, the aide said.What’s more, enforcement of the bill’s new federal insurance rules would generally be the responsibility of state regulators. With some exceptions, the federal government would step in to police private insurers only if it determined a state was not doing the job.”Unless an administration is in place in 2014 that is deeply committed to pushing recalcitrant states aside and taking direct action, it is likely that the reforms may never be implemented adequately throughout the country,” Jost wrote in a recent blog post.The government has used a similar “federal fallback” model to enforce other landmark health-care legislation, and a congressional committee found that insurance abuses festered.At issue is the practice known as rescission, in which insurers revoke policies after policyholders become severely ill or injured. To avoid paying big medical bills, insurers search policyholders’ original applications for grounds to cancel the policies, such as failure to disclose preexisting conditions.A 1996 federal law called HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, prohibited rescissions unless consumers defrauded the insurer or deliberately misrepresented their medical condition. But the federal agency responsible “has done nothing to enforce those rights or to ensure that states do so,” Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said in a hearing last year.An official testifying for the agency, Abby L. Block, confirmed that it had taken no enforcement action. She said her hands were tied unless it appeared that a state was not “substantially enforcing” the federal requirements.Despite the HIPAA standard, most states have allowed rescissions even if policyholders’ misrepresentations were accidental, the staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee reported this year.Now, Congress is trying to do something about it again. The Senate bill reaffirms that insurers cannot rescind coverage unless the policyholder made a fraudulent or intentional misrepresentation.If the bill is passed, that reform would take effect in 2010.
High-deductible health insurance: could health savings accounts hurt hospitals?: An article from: Internal Medicine News
Monday, February 15th, 2010Product Description
This digital document is an article from Internal Medicine News, published by International Medical News Group on May 1, 2004. The length of the article is 469 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: High-deductible health insurance: could health savings accounts hurt hospitals?(Practice Trends)
Author: Joyce Frieden
Publication: Internal Medicine News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2004
Publisher: International Medical News Group
Volume: 37 Issue: 9 Page: 86(1)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Study: universal coverage could reduce health disparities.: An article from: National Catholic Reporter
Monday, July 30th, 2007Product Description
This digital document is an article from National Catholic Reporter, published by National Catholic Reporter on May 15, 2009. The length of the article is 376 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Study: universal coverage could reduce health disparities.(NATION)(health insurance coverage)
Author: Paul Kleyman
Publication: National Catholic Reporter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 15, 2009
Publisher: National Catholic Reporter
Volume: 45 Issue: 15 Page: 8(1)
Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning


