No Tax on Condoms
Sen. Baucus’ health care bill taxes a lot of things, but not condoms. Or contact lenses, or tampons but hearing aids and wheel chairs are fair game.
Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., left intact a $4 billion-a-year levy on the medical devices industry — keeping the controversy alive. The industry makes some 80,000 different products from heart valves to imaging machines to tongue depressors. The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday such industry fees could eventually raise insurance premiums by roughly 1 percent.
The tax will pay for the uninsured. How does raising insurance premiums, even if only by 1%, jive with making health insurance more affordable?
Raising insurance premiums is not considered a tax by the folks in Washington. Apparently if they tax companies, who pass that increase on to consumers, whose medical bills are paid (mostly) by insurance, it is not considered a tax.
My guess is George Stephanopoulos would take a different view.
“He’s trying to avoid the perception that the middle class is going to be taxed,” said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, an information company that serves the health industry and government. “The trick is to get funding for the bill but not to have anything that smacks of a middle-class tax.”
There is quite a bit of this going on.
The cost of issuing coverage without regard for pre-existing conditions means an immediate doubling of health insurance premiums at a minimum, but that is not a tax either.
Scott Mulhauser, a spokesman for Baucus, said it’s only fair. Hospitals and drugmakers have volunteered to take cuts to help pay for the overhaul — and so should device companies.
“Revenues to the device manufacturing industry will go up as insurance coverage expands, and this fee will ensure the industry helps contribute to the reform effort as it benefits,” Mulhauser said.
Let me see if I have this straight.
More people covered by insurance means more people will buy wheelchairs and contact lenses so everyone wins. Using the Mullhauser theory, people who are not now buying these items will do so once they have insurance which means more revenue and more profits.
Right . . .