Democrats Propose Really Stupid Tax

House Democrats are considering new options to pay for an overhaul of the nation’s medical system, including a tax on health insurers’ profits, while scaling back a proposed levy on the wealthiest Americans.

The 11-company Morgan Stanley Health Care Payer Index fell 3.5 percent, the biggest drop in three months, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers were considering the so- called windfall profits tax. WellPoint Inc., the largest health insurer by enrollment, led the decline.

“Maybe that’s something we can put in the mix,” the California Democrat told reporters today. While calling the idea “very preliminary,” she said insurers, drugmakers and other health-care industries have “much more they can put on the table to bring down the cost.” ...

“What windfall profits? The insurance industry profits are in line or less than almost any other industry,” Robert Zirkelbach of the Washington-based trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans said in an telephone interview. “There is a lot of misinformation out there.”

UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest insurer by sales, had a 3.8 percent profit margin last year. It was 4.1 percent for WellPoint and 4.5 percent for Aetna Inc. of Hartford, Connecticut, the third-largest insurer, Bloomberg data shows.

SICK: OBAMA’S NEW PLAN
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
10.8.2009

Faced with a need to scrounge for revenue to fund his plan for health care, President Barack Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have come up with a brilliant new idea: Tax the sick!

In a new amendment to the health care bill, they propose to limit the deductibility of medical expenses on income taxes.

Now, taxpayers may deduct any medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of their Adjusted Gross Income. Obama and Baucus want to raise that threshold to 10% as long as the taxpayer is under 65.Their proposal literally hopes to raise $20 billion over ten years by taxing sick people.

The Democrats defend their proposal by saying that it would discourage health care spending. But nobody deliberately spends 7.5% of their income on medical costs unless they are pretty sick and needy.