Comments on: The House Has a Plan to Pay for Health Care (Yes, There’s a Catch)

By: Fewer rich, less healthcare surtax money? |

Fewer rich, less healthcare surtax money? | — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:57:30 +0000

[...] tax blogging surtax thoughts included in that roundup post come from Tax Update Blog, TaxProf Blog, Taxgirl, Tick Marks and [...]

By: Surtax Talk, Or Around the Taxosphere in 80 Seconds

Surtax Talk, Or Around the Taxosphere in 80 Seconds — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:33:05 +0000

[...] Kelly Phillips-Erb, the Tax Girl, was one of the first bloggers to write about the surtax nonsense: When the dust settles, upper class taxpayers or no, the plan calls for raising taxes. House Ways [...]

By: Boots

Boots — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:38:04 +0000

Actually garagefather, Grandma will have a bigger tab, AND will be rationed out of care. Obama is on record as saying older folks might be better off taking more pain killers and having fewer procedures. His original choice for Sec of HHS, Tom Daschle (who had to withdraw due to nonpayment of taxes) wrote a book about how to ration/deny care. Details at the link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123060332638041525.html

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:32:00 +0000

Vinny, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn’t quite clear.

By: garagefather

garagefather — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:48:41 +0000

Congress is set to ruin the entire health care system to insure about 16 million uninsured. The bogus numbers about 40 or so million people has already been debunked. If you remove guest workers, those that choose not to get the coverage they have available to them, and the rich who self insure, you are left with about 16 million people. That means that in order to provide health care to those 16 million, government will essentually ruin the system for 290 million people. There will never be a perfect system but the one we have is the best in the world and and is NOT in crisis. If you want to see crisis, go to Europe where people have to wait for everything and routinely get denied things due to cost and their age. the 500 billion dollars to be raised by this new tax is pie in the sky. Besides, it will cost a lot more than that and the burden will trickle down. Grandma will have a bigger tab.

By: Vinny

Vinny — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:09:09 +0000

Note that the surtax is based on adjusted gross income and not taxable income, so in theory you don’t have to be in the highest tax bracket to be subject to the surtax (assuming you had plenty of deductions to bring your AGI down).

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:36:11 +0000

Half of the trillion. $500 billion is expected to come from the tax increases, you are right re the remainder.

By: Angela

Angela — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:39:06 +0000

Only about half of the money will come from the tax, according to the WSJ. The other half will come in the form of reducing payments amounts for procedures covered by Medicare patients.

Grandma gets a bigger tab.

By: JN

JN — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:45:12 +0000

So, 45% top marginal rate if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. Doesn’t leave much dry powder to fund many other domestic initiatives.

This is a fascinating story because there are about 487 different proposals on the table, both on the revenue side and on the shape of what reform will look like. There will pretty clearly have to be some sort of tax raises in whatever bill is ultimately produced because the administration has committed to reform being deficit-neutral and the CBO won’t give them credit for many of the supposed cost reductions that a reformed health care system will provide.

My guess is we’ll end up with a combination of some form of the surtax, the limitation on itemized deductions, a cap on the tax exclusion for really, really expensive plans (capping premiums above whatever is the most expensive union-bargained plan) and some of the penalties and miscellaneous offsets contained in the house plan (economic substance, that old chestnut).