We are finishing up some client work and clearing the decks for some time off…..Please enjoy another guest post from our friend on other coast; Karla Dennis from Cohesive Tax. 

Without naming names, the gentle reader will certainly recall a well known former governor who was roundly condemned for claiming the new Health Care Law created “Death Panels” where nameless bureaucrats would decide life and death issues. Although this individual kept sticking to her word, the criticism mounted.

That was months ago. With relative quiet on Health Care for the moment and most attention turned to the Gulf Oil Spill,  the President’s economist Paul Krugman said on national TV that “advisory panels” would save money by denying people healthcare. No, he did not endorse Death Panels, but what he did say is just as scary. He admitted that government bureaucrats – not doctors and patients – will decide what treatment is appropriate. And that this will “save quite a lot of money”.

So, if you are in need of treatment, and you and your doctors agree on a course of action, a government bureaucrat can intervene and say “nope, sorry, too expensive”. And this is coming from a high level official who supports the plan, not a critic. 

This should send shivers down your spine.

Now even the vaunted the New York Times has gone on to say that denying people healthcare is the key feature of the new Health Care Law.  For months, media outlets like the New York Times scolded those concerned about rationed medical care.  The Health Care bill wound up containing language enabling “comparative effectiveness” boards as guiding lights for medical care decisions. 

Our taxes will mount up, not to provide health care, but to simply fund new agencies that will be forever hounded by accusations of rationing, and Medicare’s long-term budget deficit will grow, even as taxes increase and services are cut. The federal government is now starting to build the institutions that will try to reduce the soaring growth of health care costs. There will be a group to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, a so-called Medicare innovation center and a Medicare oversight board that can set payment rates.

But all these groups will face the same basic problem. Deep down, Americans tend to believe that more care is better care. We recoil from efforts to restrict care. …

David Leonhardt, the Times economics journalist goes on to praise the Health Care Law as the start of saying “no” to people who want more health care.  That’s an interesting tack for the Times to take, especially after its screeching over the use of “death panels” by critics, which meant exactly the same thing.  Now they admit that the “most important task” of the people running the Health Care reform is to deny people medical care — under circumstances where a group of elites decide it’s not worth it. 

This is why you have heard me repeatedly state in talks and webinars and in blogs and anywhere else I have a public forum, that the Health Care Law is actually a Tax Increase Law.  

The ancient general Hannibal once stated: “We will either find a way or we will make one.”  Good advice that still holds true for us today as we seek solutions to the Health Care Law. 

 To Your Success…

Karla Dennis – America’s Tax Diva

Cohesive