Tax hikes as far as the eye can see
Examiner Editorial
November 1, 2009
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had an Elizabeth Barrett Browning moment, she might well dash off these lines about the 13 tax increases included in the House Democrats' latest version of Obamacare:
How do we love thy wallet? We prefer thee not count the ways.
We love thy tax dollars to the depth and breadth and height
our grasping IRS collectors can sight, as long as our foul opponents we can slay.
Instead of poetical meter and rhyme, however, what Pelosi is most interested in is how many different ways can be found to corral more tax dollars for government coffers, and how much time remains for her and her Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate to finish transforming the world's greatest health care system into an American version of the enervating medical black bureaucracies in Canada and Britain.
The 1,990-page, 400,000-word revised Obamacare proposal hatched by the House was posted on the Web earlier this week, and it was not long before Americans for Tax Reform and others found new tax increases galore buried in the arcane language of legislative text.
There is the Employer Mandate Excise Tax of 8 percent of average wages if your boss doesn't provide approved coverage -- and trust us, "Doing this will put the company out of business" won't be an acceptable excuse for the health care bureaucrats. There is the Individual Mandate Surtax of 2.5 percent of your income if you choose not to buy approved coverage. And don't forget the Medical Devices Excise Tax equal to 2.5 percent of the wholesale price. That ought to put a stop to frivolous gadgets like MRIs that greedy medical equipment companies use to enrich themselves. For details on all 13 of these new tax increases, go to atr.org.
Here's something else to think about: Remember that deal cut back in the spring by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association and health care reform advocates in the Obama White House and Congress? The manufacturers agreed to support Obamacare in return for an $80 billion cap on mandatory rebates and price cuts on drugs sold to Medicare participants. Now, in their effort to "pay for" health care reform's $1 trillion or more cost, Pelosi and company have repudiated the deal with PhRMA and doubled the mandatory rebates and price cuts. If that's how they treat their friends, you can count on big increases in those 13 new taxes.
