Taxing Eye Lifts, Tummy Tucks, Breast Enlargements, etc.
The Senate’s “Botax”: The Senate bill proposes a 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery. The real price of cosmetic surgery has declined since at least 1992, because it is not covered by insurance, and patients pay directly. In other words, this market is completely outside the health care system that reformers are trying to reform. Taxing it makes as much sense as taxing iPods or computer terminals.
Agree totally.
It’s amazing how “reformers” want to tax the only functioning market in health care in order to subsidize a health care market that’s dysfunctional. What they should be doing is copying the cosmetic surgery market.
Remember what Ronald Reagan said, sarcastically, about government: “If it moves: Tax it. If it keeps moving: Regulate it. When it stops: Subsidize it.”
This is one more tax on the middle class.