26 April 2017 — 1107 mdt
Update on paying for pre-school by taxing hospitals
At Logicosity this morning, Edward R. Burrow delivered a scathing analysis of this tax, which the legislature dishonestly calls a “Community Benefit Fee:”
Apparently comfortable the proposed fee won’t simply be shifted onto consumers if it is ultimately approved, every D voted in favor of free money.
And, exactly why only health care consumers of the state’s largest 14 hospitals were targeted to pick up the $13.0 million tab for a “community benefit,” and not all taxpayers, is not at all clear.
Or, perhaps it is.
Discussions about the fee included references to how hospital have benefited from the expansion of Medicaid. With their newly-found fiscal flexibility, they should be able to absorb such a fee, the argument goes.
If it becomes law, the fee would terminate at about the time the authorization for expanded Medicaid sunsets. R’s hope the fee will be enough to dissuade the affected hospitals from supporting the extension of expanded Medicaid.
Don’t count on it.
Hospitals will be pass the fee on to patients.
Indeed, they will. That makes the “fee” a tax on sick people — and that makes it some of the most sickening sausage ever ground out by shameless legislators.