Dan Danner on the NFIB and Obamacare

Dan Danner has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about why the National Federation of Independent Business is against the new healthcare law.  The reasons given by them are the same as many of my reasons to be against Obamacare.

The first that Mr. Danner touches on is the $8 billion tax on group and individual plans.  The issue here is that this was another way for the Obama/Pelosi/Reid regime to protect their favorite donors: unions.

One of these new taxes is a so-called health insurance fee. It's a massive $8 billion tax (that escalates to $14.3 billion by 2018) on insurance companies based on their market share. This tax will be paid almost exclusively by small businesses and individuals because the law specifically excludes self-insured plans, the plans that most big businesses and labor unions offer, from having to pay the tax.

This was marketed by the mass media and the Congresscritters as a way to punish big insurance.  However, as with any tax on a business it will be passed on to the consumer.  87% of insured Americans will have to pay this tax at an average cost of $500 for a family of four.

Adding insult to injury, the law also requires all businesses to issue IRS 1099 forms to document every business-to-business transaction of $600 or more. To someone who's never run a business, this may sound like nothing. But Congress hopes to raise $17 billion in added tax revenues and fees from this new mandate. That's hardly nothing.

A direct consequence of this will be additional overhead for the business to fill out those forms, file their copy, and mail the IRS theirs.  That cost will be passed on to the consumer.  Additionally, the IRS will need a budget increase to process this additional paperwork.  That will lead to a tax increase for the consumer.

A $600 transaction in business for services isn't much.  For common consulting services, that is 3-6 hours depending on the market.  For something like website and email hosting, that may not even cover a months' worth of services.  Some payment gateways for processing credit cards bill their fees once the business reaches a certain threshold, or perhaps daily if there is enough volume.  That means there can be up to a b2b bill for those fees for over $600 everyday in some retail stores.  By the way, that cost goes to the consumer.

So believe what you want to believe about the new healthcare law.  The fact is that this reform only ends with the individual consumer paying the government more money both directly and indirectly.