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mnottertail -> RE: "We did raise taxes on some things" (9/26/2013 9:28:53 AM)
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Yeah, I laugh at someone pedantically tutoring us in something they don't quite got a basic understanding of.
The tax is 2.3 percent of the sale price of the taxable medical device. See Chapter 5 of IRS Publication 510, Excise Taxes, and Notice 2012-77 for additional information on the determination of sale price.
Now, who are those devices sold to, from a manufacturer of same? Hmmmmmmm. Not you. Let's say a hospital lets say it is a prosthetic leg. Do you think the device went up the 2.3 percent (in gross terms) of sale price to cover that? One thinks so, after all, we are not communists here. Now, the hospital outfits you with the leg, and insurance pays, and the premium set accordingly, and how much of the market is overseas and how much are the commies going to be contributing to our health care premiums?
At an estimated US$127.1bn in 2013, the US medical device market is the world's largest. Per capita expenditure, at US$399, is the highest in the world.
Much of the market is in private hands; there is no single health system. Public healthcare systems, known as Medicaid, for those on low incomes, are operated by each State. Since 1960, the Medicare system has provided hospital care for the elderly; this has also provided prescription drug coverage since 2006.
President Obama succeeded in signing his healthcare reform bill into law on 23rd March 2010. The bill, formally called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) HR 3590, will eventually extend health insurance cover to an estimated 32mn Americans who do not have any form of health insurance.
The PPACA requires all States to create new health insurance markets called exchanges, so that people who do not have insurance can buy tax-payer subsidised private cover. The law also expands eligibility for Medicaid so low-income adults who have no dependent children can get government insurance. Putting the two approaches together, more than 30mn Americans are expected to gain coverage by January 2014. At the end of June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the entire law in a 5-to-4 decision which deemed that the mandate was constitutional under the taxing authority afforded to the federal
government.
The USA is home to many of the world's leading medical device manufacturers, such as Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Baxter, Covidien and Medtronic. Seven out of the world's top ten medical device manufacturers are US companies.
So as we laugh, guffaw and muddle thru the lies here (doesnt look like much of a hit on our middle class) let's try not to come up with these simple gotchas in ignorant policies, because they are slightly more complex, than your local yokel teabagger is going to be capable of commenting on with their woefully inadequate command of the language, numbers, policy, and their considerable ineptitude in all matters.
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