Healthcare Reform Bill Facts
President Obama signed the new healthcare reform bill. Obama’s victory on this new healthcare reform bill may provide a modest boost in the US job market from this year. So, it is important to know some of the healthcare reform bill facts. In this article, we are going to provide some of the healthcare reform bill facts for the readers.
Although this bill is expected to increase the jobs for the Americans, this will also hike up the taxes. This tax hike is mainly going to affect the highest-income Americans. Moreover, the designed provisions to cut the healthcare costs are not sting enough. So, it may not affect the medical inflation or the federal budget deficits that much.
The most noticeable impact of the new bill is the increase in taxes for the upper class Americans. This increment majorly applies for the investment income sector. So, this law will increase the demand for healthcare without much effort to cut costs. That is why according to some economist, this is not that much effective for the economy as a whole. However, most economists do not see this as a total failure as a measure to boost the economy.
However, in the near time the bill will have a small impact as many of the provisions will not be effective until the year 2014.
Now let us look at some basic healthcare reform bill facts. As a result of the new bill, the job market can get a moderately but immediate push forward. This is mainly because this law will offer tax credits to small businesses that provide health insurance. This will reduce the incremental labour costs by almost 4% for these firms according to economists.
This law will use the excess amount that will be collected by the tax hikes to reach the uninsured 32 million Americans by 2019. All the households that have income over $250,000 will see a hike in their Medicare tax payment. Moreover, they will have to pay Medicare tax on their investment income.
The same households will also see a boost in their capital-gains taxes on investment. That plus the Medicare tax will eventually bring their effective capital-gains tax rate to 23.8%. This was 15% before the new bill was passed.
Businesses that provide high-end health benefits will incur a new tax. This tax is expected to be 20 billion dollars in the year2019. There will be financial penalties for the large employers, if they do not offer health benefits at all.
There will be new taxes for the healthcare industry as well. This can harm the drug companies’ ability to raise capital for further investment. Moreover, the added tax on medical devices can impact the new-product development also.
This healthcare reform is designed to neutralize the deficit for the government and to bring down the deficits by a moderate amount. However, many health-care experts and economist have shown their concerns about the outcome.
These are some of the conclusions drawn by specialists regarding the new healthcare reform bill. These healthcare reform bill facts can be helpful for general people.