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Jewish World Review
July 5, 2012/ 15 Tamuz, 5772
All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Is the crazily constructed, oppressively focused, unaffordable Affordable Care Act also the biggest tax in history? Technically speaking, no. It is a big tax hike that is already taking a toll on our economic future, but not the biggest. It is still a gouge that most of us will feel one way or the other.
The discussion got going after the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate could be constitutionally justified by calling it a tax. That surprised everyone in the country with common sense, seeing as how President Barack Obama himself was among those bending over backward to assert that a penalty for not buying insurance was not a tax.
The penalty was not called a tax in the legislation, either, and some political observers are arguing that if it had been — if it had been perfectly clear that here was still one more major grab at the wallets of the innocent — the legislation might not even have passed. But there were a bunch of other taxes buried in it, and the individual mandate has costs beyond the penalty. After all, the mandate is to buy insurance millions would otherwise decide not to buy.
The liberal Urban Institute puts the precise number of those who will have to pay something at 18.2 million. It says 10.9 million of those will get government assistance in footing their insurance bills, while 7.3 million will be on their own. Various analyses predict 4 million people instead will opt for the penalty, forking over something like $27 billion over the next decade. That leaves 14.2 million forced to pay insurance premiums known to exceed the cost of T-shirts at Walmart, the last time I looked.
Meanwhile, there are other big taxes in Obamacare, not the least including a Medicare hike that starts next year. Rejoice! It probably won't hit you. Congress is smart enough to aim taxes at relatively small groups with relatively few votes, and it therefore says this hike of 0.9 percent in payroll taxes will apply to only those with incomes of $200,000 and more, or $250,000 for married couples. If these folks happen to be making money on investments — which is what retired people often hope to do — they will pay an extra 3.8 percent on that income.
The Tampa Bay Times, which says in its June 29 PolitFact.com column that the income from this Medicare tax will be $210.2 billion over the next 10 years, lists still other Obamacare taxes. One applies to expensive insurance plans affording extensive coverage. Starting in 2018, they'll get hit with a whopping 40 percent excise tax. A new fee on pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers began last year (meaning prescription drugs will cost more). A couple of years down the road, health insurers will have to pay more (meaning still higher premiums, friends).
Here's a tax that some say is having deleterious effects already, even though it does not kick in until next year: a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices. Washington Post columnist George Will has argued that it "will mean not only fewer jobs but also fewer pain-reducing and life-extending inventions."
As evidence in a May 9 column, he noted that Cook Medical has abandoned plans for a new U.S. factory and that layoffs already are taking place in other companies. He wrote that even Elizabeth Warren, a liberal Democratic candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts, has said this tax should go because of its nasty impact on small businesses in that state.
The American people should care about all of this because taxes have consequences, often unintended consequences of a destructive nature. Even if Obamacare does not set a new record, it is one of the 10 largest federal tax hikes since 1951, according to Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein. There are still other costs that will get you if you don't watch out. Or even if you do.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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