“The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration found that, by May, roughly 228,000 taxpayers had claimed the small-business credit to the tune of more than $278 million. The IRS had previously tried to reach out to some 4.4 million taxpayers that it thought could have been eligible for the credit, and the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that up to $2 billion could be claimed for 2010.”
“Voters in Ohio approved a measure Tuesday night disapproving of President Obama’s healthcare law. Ohioans passed an amendment to the state constitution that says Ohio residents cannot be forced to buy health insurance… But even with strong turnout around a traditionally Democratic issue, 66 percent of voters had supported the anti-mandate initiative at the time the Associated Press called the vote.”
“Wanda Jones, president of San Francisco’s New Century Healthcare Institute, said Anthem Blue Cross also may be reacting to changes in federal regulation of Advantage plans that are being implemented as part of health care reform… Anthem’s decision will affect 113,000 Medicare beneficiaries statewide, and decisions by other health plans to drop their Advantage plans will force another 37,000 beneficiaries in California to switch plans,”
“The 2010 healthcare law contains a tax on the health insurance policies that most small businesses purchase… Estimates predict the tax will raise the cost of employer-sponsored insurance by 2% – 3%, imposing a cumulative cost of nearly $5,000 per family by 2020. The NFIB Research Foundation’s BSIM model suggests that such price increases will reduce private sector employment by 125,000 to 249,000 jobs in 2021, with 59 percent of those losses falling on small business.”
“Congress and President Barack Obama agreed this summer that widening deficits and growing debt threaten our economic future, and something must be done to get our nation’s fiscal house in order. A good start would be to agree to delay initiating the new spending in the Affordable Care Act so that a broader and more stable bipartisan consensus can be built around fiscally sustainable entitlement and tax policy.”