With Tax Season Approaching, the Affordable Care Act (ACA/Obamacare) Is the Only Thing Inside Your Wallet

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not just moving in to your doctor’s office. ACA is also a parasite living in your wallet, devouring everything in sight. The financial effects of the ACA are painful and unexpected, particularly as tax season approaches. Despite its middle name, ACA is not about care at all. In reality, it reduces care by taking money away from providers. ACA is first and predominantly a tax law. It delivers your money to the government through new taxes and increases in existing ones. “PPAHCA is emptying your wallet” lists them for you. Lest you think that nicknaming the ACA “ObamaTax” is hyperbole, here is a summary of ACA taxes. New taxes created by ACA: • Cadillac tax [hits middle class hardest, not Cadillac owners] • Earned Income Tax • Employer Mandate Tax • Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals • Health Insurers Tax • Innovator Drug Tax • Medical Device Tax [deterrent to medical innovation] • Medicine Cabinet Tax • Personal Penalty Tax, formerly the Individual Mandate • Net Investment Income Tax • New sales tax on all health insurance plans • Tanning Salon Tax [Why not a tax on Tattoo Parlors?] Existing taxes that are increased by ACA: • “Black Liquor” [bio-fuel] Tax • Medicare Payroll Tax • Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax • HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Existing taxes that are decreased by ACA: • None Consumers limited in control their own money: • Flexible Spending Accounts capped at $2500 • HSA contributions capped at $2500 More Money Coming Out (of Your Wallet) ACA offers government financial support for health insurance to 79% of the U.S. population, either through Medicaid (free insurance) or subsidized ACA-complaint insurance. The fact that the middle class is hit the hardest by Obamacare taxes is strangely ironic. At a campaign stop on October 4, 2008, Barack Obama promised supporters that, “Health care should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families.” Everything from the so-called Cadillac Tax to the Medical Device Tax ends up coming out of middle class taxpayers’ wallet. Washington takes your money and then gives it back to you, minus just a tiny charge for “Shipping and Handling, regulation and administration — 40 percent of all healthcare dollars. Less Money Going In ACA is having another effect on your wallet: putting less in. ACA has a major dampening effect on the economy and particularly on jobs. ACA mandates an increase in all employers’ fixed costs. Employers must therefore cut costs elsewhere or go out of business. Therefore, they stop hiring and take no risks such as expansion (hiring). They turn full time employees into part time workers. They often have to fire people with an estimated loss of over 2 million jobs in the private sector. Bureaucratic jobs will increase. ACA will lower the incomes of most Americans at the same time as the cost of health insurance premiums go up, so far up that Matthews and Litow warned Americans about “sticker shock.” Money coming out of your (children’s) wallets Despite its claim to be “Affordable,” ACA is the opposite. The ACA will spend well over $1.7 trillion, money we don’t have. So, we are adding trillions (with a “t”) to a national debt, which future generations will have to pay. ACA is not only cleaning out your wallet, but your children’s as well. It is important to remember that President Barack Obama started his self-styled reform of healthcare by saying he needed to “bend down” an unsustainable U.S. healthcare spending curve. How can he then justify committing the U.S. to spend even more, to bend UP the healthcare spending spiral? Where does all that money go? (You could sing these words to the Peter, Paul, & Mary song, “Where have all the flowers gone?) All that money you are paying out, often without knowing; all that money that is not going in to your wallet much less your bank account — where is it all going? Unfortunately, the answer is: NOT to people who provide care to patients. It is going to healthcare bureaucrats: accountants, actuaries, administrators, billers and coders, consultants, insurance adjusters, IRS agents, lawyers, oversight compliance officers, reconcilers, and writers of rules and regulations. Who will provide health care when you need it? Do you want your United Health insurance agent taking out your appendix? Which Congressperson should administer your chemotherapy? Two Questions You Need to Answer April 15 is fast approaching. You worry about both the black hole in your wallet and your required expenditures, both escalating insurance premiums and the increasing tax burden. Keeping in mind the first two words of ACA, ask yourself these two questions: • Is Obama’s reform of healthcare “affordable” for either you or our nation? • Is there any “care” in Obamacare?