The Sun Tan Tax

The following was posted today on Politico:

Democrats have dropped the widely mocked “botax” on cosmetic surgery in the health bill – but if you want that summertime glow all year-round, you’re going to have to pay up.

Democrats replaced the tax on tummy tucks and nose jobs – which quickly became a prime target for late-night comics – with a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services.

This means anybody who uses tanning salons with beds that have "1 or more ultraviolet lamps" would see the tax on their bill starting July 1.

Of course, in Senate-ese it sounds so much more official: the tax will be paid for services “intended for the irradiation of an individual by ultraviolet radiation, with wavelengths in air between 200 and 400 nanometers, to induce skin tanning.”

The botax was originally meant to collect $5 billion, so that's a lot of trips to the tanning booth.

Posted by Carrie Budoff Brown 09:07 AM

 

So this is what it has come to. No tort reform. No reform of fee for service. No centralized records database. A tax on sun tans; that's what these imbeciles think is important. I can picture John Cleese reading the Senate-ese line in a Monty Python sketch. Pathetic.

 

The Dems want to force everyone to buy insurance from an industry that they routinely trash in public, but take huge sums of money from in private. The insurance industry got what it wanted. The pharmaceutical industry got what it wanted. The medical device manufacturers who refused to play the game got hit with a new tax on their devices. This means that the cost of everything from pacemakers to stents is going up, but The President tells us that the cost of health care is going to go down. We have gone through the looking glass.

Perhaps the most  insidious part of this bill is the combination of guaranteed issue coupled with community rating. I'm not opposed to guaranteed issue, people should not have to go bankrupt because they get sick. But combing it with community rating makes no sense. If insurance companies have to take on people who are sick with pre-existing conditions, people who will clearly cost them more, they are going to raise all premiums to offset that cost.

As an example, take two forty year old men; one is in perfect health, the other is forty pounds overweight, smokes, and has blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels that are sky high. If these two men applied for life insurance, the second gentleman with the obvious issues would pay more. More importantly, not only should he pay more, but there would be no public outcry that the insurance company is being unfair. When these same two men apply for health care, this new bill would throw logic out the window and have them both paying the same rate via community rating. Even though the addition of millions of new customers  is a financial bonanza for the insurance companies, they are going to quietly begin raising rates across the board to cover themselves for the millions of sick people they are going to have to cover.

Given the compromises that have been made in the Senate to get to 60 votes, reconciling this bill with the House version will be next to impossible. Still more absurd compromises on taxes, abortion, fees on high value plans and other issues will be made. What will ultimately be produced will not only be bad, but will set back real reform for decades. I wonder, if a tanning salon leaves someone under the lights for too long, is that malpractice?