naples beauty
is a rolling pageful of current events, mini-lectures, and helpful hints about the world of aesthetic medicine and plastic surgery, edited by naples' most affable board-certified plastic surgeon, dr. andrea basile.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Bo-Tax Defeated!

   In case there are some of you who were not aware of the political craziness that went on just before the holidays, let me summarize.
   Under the guise of fixing America's heath care "crisis" the government added, at the last minute, a tax on Cosmetic Surgery, in an effort to fund all the costly, poorly planned changes they proposed for the health system. See Below:


Surprise Addition to Healthcare Bill is Arbitrary, Difficult to Administer

For Immediate Release: November 19, 2009
Arlington Heights, IL and New York, NY - Late yesterday, democratic leaders in the Senate unveiled their proposal for overhauling the health care system, which included a new 5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures. Senate Democrats argue that the tax, which was a surprise addition to the sweeping 2,074-page bill, will generate $5.8 billion over the next 10 years to be put towards the bill's estimated $849 billion price tag. However, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) oppose this tax as discriminatory, arbitrary and ineffective.

  Well, it turns out that this idea was unconstitutional, or at least unfair since Cosmetic Surgery patients, as it turns out, are neither rich, nor evenly distributed in terms of gender, or nationality. A tax would have discriminated against middle income females.
A letter to our local paper's editor follows:

Letter of the Day: An ugly prospect 
Editor, Daily News:
   As you are aware, as part of the national health-care reform solution there is a proposed tax on aesthetic surgery procedures.
   I truly hope that I am not alone in vehemently objecting to such a preposterous concept. I can only imagine that the idea to tax aesthetic procedures was born in some brainstorming session and was immediately, though incorrectly, thought of as a form of luxury tax.
   In this desperate economic climate nobody dared to analyze the idea any further.
   If one took the time to do so they would realize that this tax would penalize women (90 percent of aesthetic patients) and the middle class (90 percent have an income under $90,000 a year).
   This tax is not based on the logic of penalizing an activity which costs the country money, such as smoking. Instead it is a penalty on a random spending habit — an intrusion on a private use of discretionary funds.
   This tax furthermore imposes a new role upon the medical caregiver — that of tax collector. This is a role which will only hurt the patient-doctor relationship.
   The goal to improve the U.S. health-care delivery system is a respectable aspiration. However, let’s not let this goal turn into a one-man or a one-administration crusade.
   To use fear tactics, loosely controlled statistics and popular sound bites is marketing propaganda, which should not be allowed in the election process, let alone in critical policymaking.
— Andrea Basile, M.D., Naples, board-certified plastic surgeon
Fortunately reason won out this time and the tax was removed from the health care reform proposal-at least for now....

The "Bo-Tax" has been officially defeated and removed from Senate bill on Health Care Reform. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, amidst organized pressure from the medical community, lobbyists and various women's groups, decided to remove the proposed 5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures. While the proposed Bo-Tax was estimated to raise $3.7 billion over the course of 10 years, it was argued that the tax discriminated against middle-class women.

I'll keep you posted about any flip-flopping on this in the future...
-drB




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