Health-plan tax would hit California hard

[Betsy Ross]

"California could be disproportionately hit by a proposed annual tax in the national health overhaul legislation that critics say penalizes restrictive managed-care policies, which are far more popular in the Golden State than in the rest of the country."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/18/MN5S1BE2MF.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0cz7Ieg8T

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[Statistical]

2. Not only that the bill has no COLA adjustment.

Places like NYC, CA, DC are simple more expensive than the median and that includes Health Care costs.

Combine that with popularity of high premium low copay plans which are popular in CA and it is a recipe for disaster.

[FreakinDJ]

4. Since when is $500 a day "Low Co-pay"

[Statistical]

6. Personally I don't think High Premium plans are wise

However Premium is not Co-pay.

Co-pay is generally the fee paid at time of service as in a fee per service.

I agree with you that TOTAL COST OF HEALTHCARE is what matters.
Annual premiums + copays + co insurance + deductibles.
I personally have a High Deductible plan for that exact reason.

Also not sure where you are getting $500 a day from?

Tax starts on plans as low as $8000 / ($21,000 for family) annually that is as low as $21 a day ($57 per day for family plan).

[SmileyRose]

3. Great informative article. K&R

I have Kaiser in Georgia.

I do understand the purpose of the tax is to penalize insurance companies making money hand over fist off people's premiums instead of using them to provide medical care - attempting to force the greedy players to spend it on medical care rather than bonuses and dividends. Unfortunately, given the greedy mindset, they'll just figure out a way around it and in fact use the new laws to stick it to us more.

IMHO the wrong players will end up being affected.

[Nikki Stone1]

5. Another reason to scrap this bill.

As if California doesn't have enough problems already....

[amborin]

7. it's a lousy bill, for so many reasons! time to start over!

[QC]

8. Oh well, it's not like we really need California or anything.

:sarcasm:

[dana_b]

9. oh goodie

"So how does this affect California? The state could wind up paying a third more per capita in taxes than the average state - and the cost will probably be passed on to consumers in the form of higher health premiums, critics say.

The reason is the state has an unusually high number of people in these fully insured plans - 77 percent of the population compared with a national average of 48 percent."

I don't mind paying my fair share of taxes but this is stupid. We want a health care bill to help the 45 million uninsured - not to hurt those who do have insurance.

[Doctor_J]

10. You can bet that the blue states will be sending money to the red

most of the legislation passed these days sends a lot of federal money to the people who want the federal government out of their lives.

[Blue State Blues]

11. More and more it looks like

a democratic congress has managed to create a bill that will be both ineffective and massively unpopular. And it largely doesn't even start until years from now ... so anything the opposition says about it is more easily believed.

It's a gift for Republicans -- they can run on repealing it for 2 elections.

Pharma and the Insurance Industry knew exactly what they were doing when they chose to focus their lobbying on key Democrats. Wonder if those ConservaDems will ever figure out that their contributers would really rather own a Republican than rent a Democrat.