We all want good health care. We want it to be readily available and reasonably priced. And most of us certainly don’t want socialized medicine.
But as we embark upon ObamaCare, big changes are threatened in our way of dealing with health care for the American people.
Seeking to head off some of that, Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee voted recently to repeal a provision in the new health care law that would have required millions of businesses to submit 1099 tax forms for every business that sells them more than $600 in goods per year. That rule would impose massive, costly paperwork.
“I hope the repeal of this bad provision of the new health care law quickly leads to the law’s full repeal, so we can start over on real reforms that will lower the cost of health care for all Americans,” Alexander said.
Alexander, who as governor of Tennessee was a leader in health care, noted that our state has suffered 26 straight months of unemployment higher than 9 percent – “and the last thing our state’s small businesses need, as they work to grow and hire new employees, is to be forced to waste their time filling out a new tax form for every phone bill or utility payment over $600.”
The senator said in a statement from his office that if the provision were allowed to go into effect next year, it would hit more than 40 million U.S. businesses. That includes some 26 million sole proprietorships, or businesses owned by one person, according to figures from the National Taxpayer Advocate Service, an ombudsman for the Internal Revenue Service.
We want reliable, efficient health care for all Americans – but we don’t want to be strangled by red tape or smothered by high costs.
We face major challenges as ObamaCare moves along, but it appears that at least one of its burdensome provision will be removed.