Who Picks Up the Tab?

Written into The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are a few provisions detailing who in the country are going to be responsible for paying for the cost of this universal health care or single payer insurance. There are a few areas of the medical health reform bill dedicated to taking money from one group of citizens to give to another group of citizens.  So who exactly picks up the tab? This will affect everyone and the medical care that is being offered will be useless to everyone.

1. Higher Medicare taxes

2. Forty percent tax on Cadillac insurance plans

3. Newly implemented health industry fees

4. Tanning salon tax

5. Medicare reduction tax

Individuals with an annual income of two hundred thousand dollars and couples with a combined annual income of two hundred fifty thousand dollars will see an increase in their Medicare health care tax between just shy of one percent to as high as 2.35 percent. Individuals with unearned income respective to dividends and interest will see a new tax of 3.8 percent.

This concept is very interesting since it was the government who borrowed almost one trillion dollars from taxpayers to pay for this health insurance reform package. Now the taxpayers are also supposed to pay this money back to the government who borrowed it in the first place.

The new tax on what the government is calling the Cadillac tax is being imposed mostly on union employees who maintain a high quality insurance policy for the regular members. Under the new health reform bill, all union members who are enrolled in the Cadillac insurance packages are expected to pay for another individual through the forty percent tax.

The government has decided how much an affordable health insurance policy should cost each individual, except of course all government employees who are exempt from the rules, laws, and regulations that we the people are expected to obey. Of course, this new health reform bill does not officially go into effect until 2018 giving all union members an opportunity to drop the current insurance coverage for their families and purchase a low cost health insurance only for the employee.

Drug manufacturers and insurance providers are expected to give billions to the government to offset some of the cost over the next few years. All medical health devices will now be taxed at a rate of 2.9 percent with the private tanning businesses paying a ten percent tax. The Medicare insurance industry will be hit the hardest with half a trillion dollars being removed from their current roles.