Karl Rove in the Journal:
Which brings us to President Obama's many claims about his health-care reform. Take his oft-expressed statement that if you like the coverage you have, you can keep it. That sounds good—but perverse incentives in his new law will cause most Americans to lose their existing insurance.
This was brought home to me when I asked the CEO of a major restaurant chain about health reform's effect on his company, which now spends $25 million a year on employee health insurance. That will jump to at least $90 million a year once the new law is phased in. It will be cheaper, he told me, for the company to dump its coverage and pay a fine—$2,000 for each full-time worker—and make sure that no part-time employee accidentally worked 31 hours and thereby incurred the fine.
and
Health plans would no longer be grandfathered if a business changes insurance companies (a common practice when employers shop for lower prices), raises deductibles more than 5%, drops any existing benefits, or even increases co-pays by as little as $5.
Complying with these new rules would raise costs for companies who provide coverage, reduce competition among health insurance companies, and discourage efforts to make employees more price conscious. The Obama administration itself estimates that these draft rules could cost up to 80% of small employers and 64% of large employers their grandfathered status. This translates to between 87 million and 115 million Americans losing their current coverage.
To paraphrase Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), whose office was just vandalized, "You lied Mr. President".
These nuggets were passed on to me, but I couldn't verify them on snopes.com. Take them with a grain of salt and a stiff drink if they're true:
A Real Estate Tax?
Under the new health care bill - did you know that all real estate
transactions are now subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax? The bulk of these new
taxes don't kick in until 2013 (presumably after Obama's re-election). You
can thank Nancy, Harry and Barack and your local Democrat Congressman for
this one. If you sell your $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax.
Taxing your health benefits?
Starting in 2011 (next year folks) your W 2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of what ever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or Governmental body of some sort. If you're retired ? So what; your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get the dollar value (cost of what the company pays for your insurance) will be considered income and added to your gross pay. You will be taxed on the total.You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen.
Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year. For many it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for 15 % that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases..
Not believing this I researched the summaries and here's what I read:
On page 25 of 29 :
TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec . 9001 , as modified by sec. 10901)
Sec.9002. "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."
Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters. Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what I just told you about.
Kiplingers is subsciption only, so I couldn't check this out. Come to think of it, I may just have that stiff drink after all.
Remember to vote on 11/2/10 and do everything you can to help a deserving candidate before then. The future of our country is at stake.
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