The combination of the presidential election and legitimate calls for less expensive health care for all has thrown Congress into another feeding frenzy. This time it’s over national health insurance, so hang on to your wallet. Most of Congress supports some form of “pay-or-play: scheme.

Under the “pay-or-play”, employers either provide government determined minimum health insurance or pay a payroll tax to enroll employees in a federal health insurance plan. This would do nothing more than soak employers, taxpayers, and cut the quality of health care. Their proposal would result in throwing money at costly “cures” that are worse than the ailment. The last thing taxpayers need is a new government program twice the size of Medicare.

As an employer, my vote goes to health care for all without government intervention. That would benefit 31 to 36 million Americans currently uninsured. To solve the health care problem, let’s start with a positive logical approach that clearly defines the bigger problems and provides reforms which are not politically motivated.

• Monopolies in the provision of care must be broken to lower costs. Something is wrong with a system that has been pushing up health care costs at an average of nearly 9% a year for the last decade. That’s nearly twice the rate of inflation.

• Participants should share in more of the costs. As a group, we have become health care junkies. We don’t have a truly free market system as long as medical insurance drives demand, and patients are unwilling or unable to learn the true price of services they’re buying.

• The escalating burden of malpractice suits must be stopped. Witness plaintiffs in hot pursuit of Eli Lilley, maker of the anti-depressant drug Prozac: or Upjohn, maker of the popular sleeping pill Halcion and most recently Dow Corning as maker silicone gel breast implants. Forbes magazine labels this litigation cost a “tort tax”. According to a recent article, tort claims cost the country $117 billion dollars in 1987. Medical doctors, faced with the threat of malpractice, have resorted to defensive medicine, particularly in the form of redundant testing.

• The medical profession has to be held accountable and to a higher standard. Although most business people compete on price, doctors rarely do. The absence of effective economic controls, as would naturally occur in a free market, creates anomalies. For example, Detroit’s rate of caesarean birth, which is five times more expensive that vaginal birth, is double that of Minneapolis. For this country as a whole, C-sections have increased 500% in the last two decades. To my knowledge, there’s no medical evidence that can explain this interesting phenomenon. Are Detroit C-section rates higher than Minneapolis’ because C-sections pay better on Medicaid fee schedules when compared to normal deliveries? I have to wonder.

• Since the inception of the Canadian system in 1971, the real cost of per capita health care has gone up and now exceeds that of the largest HMO’s in the U.S.

• The average hospital stay in Canada is 42% longer than in the U.S. Therefore, the system is no more efficient.

• Canadians are flocking to the U.S. to get health care they cannot get at home. In many cases, medial appointments must be scheduled one year in advance. Plan your illnesses carefully!

Other countries that have had a brush with national health insurance are now moving in the opposite direction. The father of Quebec’s health care system now advocates privatization and competition; Sweden is introducing “managed competition” and New Zealand is ending a forty year experiment with socialized medicine by giving people tax incentives to purchase private insurance.

Clearly, national health insurance is an attempt to make the federal government responsible for our well-being. Although there is a mindset that buys into that, I believe they are the minority. Lawmakers encourage our irresponsibility because the platform sells. However, allowing the government to assume responsibility for health care can only end in frustration. The government will simply take increasing levels of control while leaving us with 100% responsibility and accountability for our lives. That is one more reason why as government grows larger, their populations grow more frustrated and unhappy. In fact, government control has culminated in endless taxation, endless regulation, enormous bureaucracy and the lowest level of public service ever experienced.

Congress must learn that solutions to social problems can be found in the tried and proven mechanisms of free market, not by clogging the system with further governmental controls or by bleeding taxpayers through a government-administered national health care plan. I believe my proposal could help us achieve all of our objectives at a much lower cost.

In my opinion, the arguments against national health care haven’t changed much.  What has changed since I wrote this piece 15+ years ago is that the American people have lost their way and greed and impatience have become an even bigger part of our lives. Specifically the American people have become more inclined to let government take more and more control of our individual freedoms and allowed scoundrels, like the “leaders” on Wall Street and the Obama administration pillage the United States Treasury.

While there is no doubt that the health care system needs help, it is still, bar none, the best system in the world. It is equally clear that the current administration with its attitude of “From each according to his ability to each according to his need” is hell bent on forcing national health care down our throats whether we like it or not.

God help America.

This article was written by Gary Field, CPA at Numerico, PC. Click here to view Numerico’s website.

1. Register with the IRS and obtain a preparer tax identification number. Once a preparer is registered, the IRS will be able to verify that the preparer has filed his or her personal tax returns and business and employment tax returns, along with paying the taxes on those returns. If the paid tax preparer has not filed those returns timely or paid the taxes due, penalties can be imposed by the IRS, including a prohibition on filing tax returns for clients.

2. Submit to a competency test. This rule does not apply to attorneys and certified public accountants that are active and in good standing with their licensing agencies.

3. Obtain continuing professional education. Again this rule does not apply to the attorneys and certified public accountants of Demorest Law Firm, PLLC, or Numerico, P.C. since we have our own requirements from the Michigan Bar Association and the Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants.

In my opinion, the proposed new rules are long overdue. Currently, only certified public accountants, attorneys and enrolled agents have standards that are implemented by their individual associations. For far too long, tax preparers have been able to put a sign up that says Joe’s Tax Service, yet they were not required to have any formal training, testing or registration requirements. The IRS is beginning to understand the complexities and dangers involved in regulating an industry with certain unregulated components.

Hopefully these proposed regulations will add a serious deterrent to the fraudulent or incompetent preparers that we hear about far too often in stories from individual taxpayers such as “I don’t know why I got such a large refund, my preparer just had me sign the return and I didn’t get all of the reported refund.” “ I didn’t know that I hadn’t been filing returns, I thought my preparer had already filed them.” “What do you mean that I have not paid my employment taxes for my business or filed my employment tax forms? I gave my paid tax preparer access to my Company’s bank account and electronic withdrawals for the employment taxes were taken from my bank account.”

To read the IRS proposed regulations please click here.

Read the recent Detroit Free Press Article Here

It is amazing to me that the current occupants of Congress and the White House have not removed this provision due to soaring budget deficits. After all they are taking the short sighted view of getting tax money today while they are in office, at the expense of getting no tax money in future years from traditional IRA distributions, when they may no longer be in office.

As we have seen over the years anything written into law can also be undone when it no longer benefits the party that is in power. However let’s assume that the politicians decide to enact this provision in the law. Should you take advantage of this opportunity, well it depends on your facts and circumstances, as well as where you think that tax rates are headed in the future.

Susan Tompor’s of the Detroit Free Press in an article entitled “Roth IRA conversion isn’t for everyone” provides a good summary of the pros and cons in regards to whether your should entertain the idea of a Roth IRA conversion.

To read her article please click here. http://www.freep.com/article/20091119/COL07/911190463/1088/Roth-IRA-conversion-isnt-for-everyone

You can also check out our Roth conversion calculator at http://www.numerico.com/calc-section.php?category=Retirement Then click on the Roth IRA Transfer Evaluator link to run the calculation.

This article was written by Jay Kossen, CPA at Numerico, PC. Click here to view Numerico’s website.

Those of us at Detroit Business Law, Demorest Law Firm, and Numerico are thankful for the opportunity to provide our readers with information, as well as the opportunity to reach a new audience.  Be sure to let us know if there’s a specific issue that you’d like us to cover in the future.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving and we’ll be back with a new post on Monday, November 30.

This article was written by Melissa L. Demorest, Associate at Demorest Law Firm.

The article ends with a great line, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  We talk to our clients on a daily basis about making sound decisions and proper planning.  Hopefully this article is a step in that direction for your business.

Please let us know how we can help.

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Soul of the Community Study – Detroit

Crain’s Detroit Article