Health care bill burdens small business with taxes despite 10.2 percent unemployment

     What is the answer to an unemployment rate ticking up above 10 percent? Burden evil business owners of course!

     At a time when politicians are attempting to pull the wool over people's eyes by touting the wonders of "jobless recovery" (I wonder if I will get a "jobless paycheck") they were also busy passing H.R. 3962 also known in Orwellian newspeak as the  "Affordable Health Care for America Act". You can read all about newspeak here. http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/

     Unveiled on the day before Halloween the 1900 page bill - the largest spending bill in history- was passed in a mere nine days after being unveiled in its final form. For some context the United States Constitution, a document which when put into modern format totals around 15 pages, required about nine months to be ratified after adoption - and they didn't even have air conditioning.

     Despite 10.2 percent unemployment the bill penalizes small businesses with payrolls over 500k per year - about 10-20 full time employees give or take. The penalty is equal to eight percent of the payroll forcing businesses that are unable to afford a health care program to take a significant tax hit.

     At least you can still keep your current health care, at least for awhile. Legislation forcing insurance companies to accept customers with preexisting conditions is fully in tact. How this works in reality is a bit more nebulous. A person with a medical issue costing say, 100 thousand dollars per year can simply go to any insurance company and sign up for "insurance" but what do they pay as a premium for this retroactive insurance? The cap is 5,000 dollars per year. This essentially forces insurers to take a 95 thousand dollar per year hit - for an industry that only has 2-4 percent profit margins it is pretty tough to imagine how they can possibly stay in business with such a bizarre requirement. No one wants to send people off to die just because they have expensive conditions but we should at least be honest and acknowledge that this single rule will put every insurance company out of business - that is a fact. This is a complex issue but that is why this bill should have had more debate and input to ensure a sustainable solution.

     Notably, although not surprisingly absent from the seemingly endless H.R. 3962 is malpractice, or tort reform. Not surprising because Opensecrets.org reports that the American Association for Justice, a top trial lawyer lobbying group, ranked 6th in contributions on the list of top 100 special interest groups in Washington. Furthermore the AAJ gave 90 percent of those contributions to Democrats. If anyone ever had a question as to why the obvious money saver of tort reform was never implemented- this is the crystal clear answer.

     Our leaders in Washington however did find it important to ensure that people who are residing illegally within our borders have adequate access to the new health care plan. "You lie!" comes to mind- maybe Joe Wilson wasn't so crazy after all.

      Unfortunately there is no specified system to confirm citizenship in the bill- essentially allowing for illegals to not just buy coverage but receive tax payer subsidies as well. Late last week Hispanic members of the house threatened a revolt if illegals were not covered by the bill. Obama had numerous "read my lips" moments where He adamantly assured worried Americans that illegals will absolutely not be covered under this bill but apparently the Hispanic votes in the House were simply too important to be bothered by such pesky promises.

     The only positive thing about this bill it is that the bill is not law.... yet. It still must work its way through the Senate which is widely regarded as the "cooler" when it comes to such controversial legislation. Again the founding fathers show their forward thinking genius as they intended the Senate to be just that- a cool head amongst reactionaries who appear to have lost their minds.