New Taxes for everybody to Pay for Healthcare-

[Spursmania]

Congressional Representatives are debating what else to tax in order to support the cost of Health care reform.

Soda, cigarettes, beer/wine and alcoholic beverages, Botox, Plastic surgery, gasoline were mentioned today on the news...

What do you think?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22444.html

http://standupforamerica.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/cigarette-tax-hikes.jpg

[ducks]

air

[ElNono]

Congressional Representatives are debating what else to tax in order to support the cost of Health care reform.

Soda, cigarettes, beer/wine and alcoholic beverages, Botox, Plastic surgery, gasoline were mentioned today on the news...

What do you think?


I think we might as well start thinking about it now, since the taxes are coming with or without reform.

[Spursmania]

I think we might as well start thinking about it now, since the taxes are coming with or without reform.

I agree. Unfortunately, they will come, but I think a lot faster with the health reform since it has to be paid for. My bet are the easy ones get taxed first-the sin taxes. But Botox and plastic surgery? Wow...

Not that I agree with any of these, but I wonder where we'll be ten years from now.

[Spursmania]

air

no kidding:lol

[George Gervin's Afro]

Congressional Representatives are debating what else to tax in order to support the cost of Health care reform.

Soda, cigarettes, beer/wine and alcoholic beverages, Botox, Plastic surgery, gasoline were mentioned today on the news...

What do you think?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22444.html

http://standupforamerica.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/cigarette-tax-hikes.jpg

skip plastic surgery

[Yonivore]

Q8erePM8V5U
So, we can surely expect a veto of anything that comes out of Congress, right?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Q8erePM8V5U
So, we can surely expect a veto of anything that comes out of Congress, right?

since you gave someone else 7 3/4 yrs to veto a bill I'll do the same. fair?

[Yonivore]

since you gave someone else 7 3/4 yrs to veto a bill I'll do the same. fair?
You can do what you want. This is the same type promise that cost George H. W. Bush a second term.

[jack sommerset]

George. I know this is hard for you to understand. I am going to help you this one time. That is it. That video Yoni posted with Obama stating no new taxes of any kind for someone making less than $250,000 was a lie. When someone tells someone else they are going to do or in this case not going to do and do it. That is called a lie.

Why is it hard for you to admit Obama is a liar? A liar is someone who tells lies.

[George Gervin's Afro]

George. I know this is hard for you to understand. I am going to help you this one time. That is it. That video Yoni posted with Obama stating no new taxes of any kind for someone making less than $250,000 was a lie. When someone tells someone else they are going to do or in this case not going to do and do it. That is called a lie.

Why is it hard for you to admit Obama is a liar? A liar is someone who tells lies.

is he going to raise income taxes on people who make less than 250,000?

..yes or no

[Spursmania]

Promises, Promises: Obama's Tax Pledge Unrealistic

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_tax_promise

:stirpot:

[jack sommerset]

is he going to raise income taxes on people who make less than 250,000?

..yes or no

:lol look at you try to take contol of this conversation. FUNNY. "No new taxes of any kind" He did not say he will raise all sorts of other shit that will effect ur home life but not ur income tax. He said "no new taxes of any kind"But he has 3 years 5 months left he may even do that.

You are like the whore who gets beat up by her pimp and tries to make excuses for his abusive behavior. He is a liar. This is not his only lie. You know this.

[George Gervin's Afro]

:lol look at you try to take contol of this conversation. FUNNY. "No new taxes of any kind" He did not say he will raise all sorts of other shit that will effect ur home life but not ur income tax. He said "no new taxes of any kind"But he has 3 years 5 months left he may even do that.

You are like the whore who gets beat up by her pimp and tries to make excuses for his abusive behavior. He is a liar. This is not his only lie. You know this.

So now Obama will be blamed for any non income tax increase on the middle class? Is that what you are claiming?

[ElNono]

I agree. Unfortunately, they will come, but I think a lot faster with the health reform since it has to be paid for.

Not really. If Medicare and Medicaid alone are not reigned in, we'll be having to pay $1 trillion on them in about 5 years. In 10 years (by the time we would reach the $1 trillion mark on the reform plan) we'll basically be unable to cover the costs.

[clambake]

nice try, jack.

[Spursmania]

Not really. If Medicare and Medicaid alone are not reigned in, we'll be having to pay $1 trillion on them in about 5 years. In 10 years (by the time we would reach the $1 trillion mark on the reform plan) we'll basically be unable to cover the costs.

:wow:wow:wow

[jack sommerset]

So now Obama will be blamed for any non income tax increase on the middle class? Is that what you are claiming?

I think you are really trying to hard to defend ur pimp. He lied in that video as plain as the day was but you can't admit that. It kills you to say Obama is a liar when he clearly is. You can't even say he should not have said that. You can't even say some taxes are out of his control or he does not even know about them so that does not make him responsible for his LIE he told about "no new taxes" but the point is he is well aware of raising new taxes on people he said he would not raise them on. That is the fact. You want to act stupid and try to defend this liar, that is ur business.

[Yonivore]

So now Obama will be blamed for any non income tax increase on the middle class? Is that what you are claiming?
Hey, listen to his promise...that's pretty much what he said.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I think you are really trying to hard to defend ur pimp. He lied in that video as plain as the day was but you can't admit that. It kills you to say Obama is a liar when he clearly is. You can't even say he should not have said that. You can't even say some taxes are out of his control or he does not even know about them so that does not make him responsible for his LIE he told about "no new taxes" but the point is he is well aware of raising new taxes on people he said he would not raise them on. That is the fact. You want to act stupid and try to defend this liar, that is ur business.

NO Jack I get what you are trying say... so I guess you stand by blaming Obama for increases he has nothing to do with..how intellectually dishonest of you... what taxes does he control?

[Yonivore]

NO Jack I get what you are trying say... so I guess you stand by blaming Obama for increases he has nothing to do with..how intellectually dishonest of you... what taxes does he control?
Well, during the campaign, he pretended to hold sway over the same.

And, through his veto pen, he controls them all to some extent. Of course, he would actually have to read the legislation to know if he was raising taxes or not...however, I get the idea he would just say, "I'm not familiar with that provision."

[boutons_deux]

Just think, if we had the $3T that dubya, dickhead, and neo-c*nts wasted in Iraq, and the $100Bs of interest on it, we could cover everybody without costing citizens anything, while fucking over the health insurance scammers and BigPharma.

[Yonivore]

Just think, if we had the $3T that dubya, dickhead, and neo-c*nts wasted in Iraq, and the $100Bs of interest on it, we could cover everybody without costing citizens anything, while fucking over the health insurance scammers and BigPharma.
Congress would have spent it elsewhere...on something less important than our national security.

[balli]

I don't care what Obama said, but :tu :tu to sin taxes. Especially to pay for healthcare.

on something less important than our national security.
Which Iraq proved to be oh so important to. :rolleyes

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

The obvious solution would be to quit spending money.

But that's a foreign concept to the assholes on both sides of the aisle in D.C.

So in lieu of that, blame Bush [/libs]

[Yonivore]

Which Iraq proved to be oh so important to.
Fixed.

Glad you finally recognize that.

[boutons_deux]

Yoni was last seen, hand in hand with Jack Sommerset, wandering around Blanco in a fog, muttering about looking for WMD and saying terrorists were inhabiting his body.

[Nbadan]

I'll pay a sin tax if the $700/per month I pay for my current plan is reduced and I have a assurance that they won't drop me when I need it most...

[Spursmania]

Here is what they call the "Fat Tax" on fatty foods...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/27/fat-tax-healthcare-business-washington-obama.html

[Bender]

will Kool-Aid be taxed?

http://www.brokencountry.com/webimages/obama_aide.jpg

[101A]

It actually sounds very similar to a "read my lips" pledge I heard over twenty years ago....makes for pretty simply campaign adds.

[SonOfAGun]

will Kool-Aid be taxed?

http://www.brokencountry.com/webimages/obama_aide.jpg

Why you gotta make it grape kool-aid? huh!?

[rjv]

by Bill Moyers & Michael Winship

Push finally came to shove in Washington this week as the battle for health care escalated from scattered sniper fire into all-out combat. If it all seems to be getting more and more confusing, join the club. It's hard to see what's happening through all the gunsmoke.

The Republicans have more than health care reform in their bombsights -- they want a loss for Obama so crushing it will bring the administration to its knees and restore GOP control of Congress after next year's elections. In the words of Republican Senator Jim DeMint, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

The "Waterloo" of DeMint's metaphor, of course, is not the 1974 ABBA hit but the battle in 1815 that ended Napoleon Bonaparte's rule as Emperor of France -- a humiliating defeat and a turning point in European history. Right-wingers like Glenn Beck see Obama as Napoleon incarnate, a popular emperor who must be stopped.

Here's what Beck said on his television show Monday, July 20: "I'm telling you, this guy is dangerous. He's never lost before. He won't understand... like, 'Who are you to question me?' I mean, this guy is practically an imperial President now. When he starts to lose and people start to question him and push him back against the wall, he's not gonna know how to react."

The Republican strategy is almost identical to the way they turned health care into Waterloo for Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993. Back then, one of their chief propagandists, William Kristol, urged his party to block any health care plan for fear that Democrats would be seen as "the generous protector of middle class interests." Now he's telling the GOP to "go for the kill... throw the kitchen sink... drive a stake through its heart... We need to start over."

So in lockstep are the Republicans that when strategist Alex Castellanos issued a memo outlining their battle plan, party chairman Michael Steele parroted large sections of it word for word in a speech at Washington's National Press Club. Asked a health care-related question that took him off script, Steele replied, "I don't do policy."

As the Republicans fired away, big business stepped up the attack, too, their lobbying and advertising guns blazing. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, announced a major campaign of rallies and print and Internet ads to crush the White House plan for a competitive public option allowing consumers to choose between a government plan and private health insurance. In key states where members of Congress remain on the fence, the airwaves are vibrating with television commercials aimed at shifting hearts and minds away from any change that might threaten profits.

President Obama rejected the Republicans' Waterloo metaphor and mounted a massive media counteroffensive of his own. But the President has already run into booby traps of his own making and minefields laid by members of his own party, exacerbated when the Congressional Budget Office reported that reform plans, instead of controlling costs, would send the national debt further into the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, supporters who want to scrap the present system for fundamental change are staring glumly though the fog of war at a battlefield in total disarray. They fear that in the White House's desire to get a bill -- any bill -- passed by Congress, it will have been so compromised, so bent to favor the big interests, that it will be less Waterloo than water down, a steady diluting of the change they had hoped for and that America needs.

The big drug companies are already so pleased with what they've been promised that they've brought back Harry and Louise -- the make-believe couple who starred in TV ads that helped torpedo the Clinton health care plan -- but this time they're in favor of reform.

According to the Associated Press, the drug industry's trade group PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and the drug company Pfizer "reported spending more money than other health care organizations on lobbying in the second quarter of this year" -- $6.2 million from PhRMA, $5.6 million from Pfizer.

"Including its latest report, PhRMA has now spent $13.1 million lobbying so far this year. Pfizer has reported $11.7 million in lobbying expenses for 2009."

This is part of the reason, as Alicia Mundy and Laura Meckler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, that "the pharmaceuticals industry, which President Barack Obama promised to 'take on' during his campaign, is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul."

Their story describes "a string of victories" plucked from the Senate Finance Committee by drug company lobbyists, including no cost-cutting steps, no cheaper drugs to be allowed across the border from Canada, and no direct Federal government negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies to lower Medicare drug prices.

And that's not all. The Senate Health Committee is giving the biotech industry monopoly protection against competition from generic drugs for 12 years after they go on the market.

No wonder the cost of reform keeps going up and up and up. Could it be that Harry and Louise are happier because, this time, they're in on the deal?
Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers (http://www.pbs.org/moyers). Additional research provided by editorial producer Rebecca Wharton.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/25

[sam1617]

I love that Moyers felt the need to explain what Waterloo was...

[RandomGuy]

You say that as if we don't already face embedded price hikes in EVERYTHING we buy anyways, and those prices will continue to escalate.

I would rather force the true cost of all of this into the open, than to pay all the hidden costs and economic drags of doing nothing anyways. At least then we might actually deal with our problems.

I guess people would prefer to have their head in the sand. OMG! LOOK AT WHAT IT WOULD COST US!

Got news for y'all, its costing us plenty now.

[Bender]

I love that Moyers felt the need to explain what Waterloo was...
Situation Normal for our Dumbed Down country

[ploto]

This country has been debating this topic for a 100 years and I respect those Presidents who have at least tried to tackle it- like Clinton did.

[rjv]

Situation Normal for our Dumbed Down country

exacty. there are probably more people in america who think waterloo is just an ABBA song.

[angrydude]

is he going to raise income taxes on people who make less than 250,000?

..yes or no

if you understand that devaluing the currency is indirect taxation by lowering your purchasing power, than yes.

[Wild Cobra]

Well, more taxation will just get us less revenue. It will hamper the economy more.
Not really. If Medicare and Medicaid alone are not reigned in, we'll be having to pay $1 trillion on them in about 5 years. In 10 years (by the time we would reach the $1 trillion mark on the reform plan) we'll basically be unable to cover the costs.
These are the "third rail," along with Social Security. It is death to a politician that tries to fix it, because it really means change. These will continue to hurt us, along with the other social systems in place, until they are so painful, surgery has to be performed on this nation.

[ElNono]

Well, more taxation will just get us less revenue. It will hamper the economy more.

Not true.


These are the "third rail," along with Social Security. It is death to a politician that tries to fix it, because it really means change. These will continue to hurt us, along with the other social systems in place, until they are so painful, surgery has to be performed on this nation.

That's what reform means. You might not necessarily agree with this one, but it's indeed 'surgery' that's being done.
And social systems are not an 'absolute bad'. There's plenty of sustainable social systems around the world, even though you probably don't agree with them.

[101A]

Their story describes "a string of victories" plucked from the Senate Finance Committee by drug company lobbyists, including no cost-cutting steps, no cheaper drugs to be allowed across the border from Canada, and no direct Federal government negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies to lower Medicare drug prices.

And that's not all. The Senate Health Committee is giving the biotech industry monopoly protection against competition from generic drugs for 12 years after they go on the market.

The govt. is incapable of controlling ANYTHING! How many times must it be proven? Giving it more power is just providing more power for those that manipulate the government to wield over us!

Can you liberals not EVER recognize that truism?

[Spursmania]

Cosmetic surgery tax proposed to finance health care reform

Nose jobs, breast enhancements, tummy tucks and liposuction could be hit with a ten per cent tax to help foot the bill of Barack Obama's $1 trillion overhaul of the health care system.



By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 10:05PM BST 28 Jul 2009


Max Baucus, the chairman of the senate finance committee which is drawing up one of several versions of a health care reform bill, described the proposed cosmetic surgery tax as "interesting", "creative" and "kind of fun".
Americans last year spent $10.3 billion (£6.3 billion) on 12.1 million operations or procedures to improve their looks or replace the hair on their heads.

Related Articles



Obesity leads to rise in cosmetic surgery to reduce flabby skin (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3183718/Obesity-leads-to-rise-in-cosmetic-surgery-to-reduce-flabby-skin.html)
Nip/tuck archive (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3356784/Niptuck-archive.html)
Cindy Sherman: Spr?th Magers Gallery - review (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/richarddorment/5231177/Cindy-Sherman-Spruth-Magers-Gallery---review.html)
Cosmetic surgery: From boom to bigger busts (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/beauty/5159931/Cosmetic-surgery-From-boom-to-bigger-busts.html)
Breast enlargements and tummy tucks rise by a third (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4343257/Breast-enlargements-and-tummy-tucks-rise-by-a-third.html)


Five million doses of wrinkle-reducing Botox were injected at an average cost of $500, while 307,230 women had their breasts enlarged for an average $3,816. Nearly 245,138 people had excess fat sucked out of their body, while 121,653 tummy tucks were performed.
Intended as a tax on the rich, the plan would cover all procedures that are currently not tax deductible and are not commonly covered by health insurance.
Tax deductions are allowed on procedures such as reconstructive surgery due to cancer, but nose jobs, liposuction, teeth whitening and hair implants would be subject to the new tax.
Critics have said it would give doctors the "bureaucratic nightmare" of deciding whether the tax was applicable, and would also discriminate against women, who make up 86 per cent of cosmetic surgery patients.
Other critics have said the tax would unfairly target the middle class.
Malcolm Roth, a vice president at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons who has a practice in New York, said most patients earn less than $100,000 a year.
"Typically I see women who have had children and want a tummy tuck or liposuction - they call it a 'mummy makeover'. People literally scrimp and save for years and wait until they are 40 or 50 and want to give themselves a present."
Several states have looked at a similar tax, but only New Jersey has gone ahead. It has, however, reportedly only achieved 25 per cent of the forecast revenue and two years ago voted to repeal the law. The repeal was later vetoed by Governor John Corzine.
The problem of funding health care reform has dogged Mr Obama's effort to change a system that is widely regarded to be failing too many members of the public.
Conservative members of his own Democratic party have balked at the cost, delaying negotiations by weeks.
Congress has admitted it will miss his deadline of the start of the summer break on Aug 8 to agree on draft bills which would be merged into one bill in the autumn.
Mr Obama has been forced to push his proposals hard in a series of public appearances. On Tuesday he held a telephonic "town hall" meeting with 100,000 members of the AARP, an association for the over 50s that is considered the most powerful interest group in the country.
Meanwhile, three Democrats and three Republicans from the Senate finance committee said they were considering a tax of up to 35 per cent on high-cost insurance policies in order to rein in rapidly escalating costs.
But in a blow to the president, they reportedly had agreed to drop the idea of a public insurance company to compete with private companies.





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5926948/Cosmetic-surgery-tax-proposed-to-finance-health-care-reform.html

USA (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/)

[SnakeBoy]

is he going to raise income taxes on people who make less than 250,000?

..yes or no

When the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire the middle class will see a tax increase. Technically you will be able to argue that Obama didn't raise taxes and I'm sure the Obama supporters will do their best. We'll see if people buy it.

[RandomGuy]

I love that Moyers felt the need to explain what Waterloo was...

Hmm.

It was a device used to segueway into the next concept, that of the GOP feeling they must stop Mr. Obama at all costs.

Don't think it was dumbed down to anybody, just an extension of a rather common metaphor.

[SonOfAGun]

tax dez nuts

ugh *crotch grab*

[Spursmania]

tax dez nuts

ugh *crotch grab*

:lol