Nip/Tuck/Tax

Thinking about a tummy tuck? How about a facelift or "augmentation" surgery? Better think again:

"Face-lifts, tummy tucks and hair transplants could be hit with a new tax to help finance the trillion-dollar healthcare overhaul plan, according to sources familiar with the Senate talks."

One has to wonder, though, how an effort lauded as "deficit neutral" could give rise to so many proposed tax increases. Oh, that's right, by raising taxes, we can keep the deficit low. I'm no economist, but something about that equation strikes me as, um...unlikely.

Now, regular readers know that I'm very much taken with the concept of "medical necessity;"still, it never occurred to me that penalizing folks for those choices was a grand idea. But that's just what Congress is mulling:

"It would target procedures prohibited under Section 213 of the tax code, which deals with itemized deductions for medical expenses not covered by health insurance."

So, it's a hat-trick: not covered by insurance, hence not eligible for in-network pricing (discounts) and a hefty tax penalty to boot(y)? Is that part of that whole "soak the rich" mentality that's going to lower medical costs for the rest of us?

I didn't think so: a similar tax scheme in the Garden State yielded only about "25 percent of anticipated revenue since it was enacted in 2004 and imposes "another bureaucratic layer," including questions of how to determine what procedures are eligible."

Yep, just what we need: another "bureaucratic layer" is just the ticket to reining in health costs.

Sounds like a classic case of cranial-rectal inversion to me.