The governor just signed HB 1381, the provider tax. Her signature makes law an act that increases your federal tax burden. The good news is that the bill “sunsets” in 2014 and hopefully this corporate handout of your money will no longer be available to the big hospitals. I eagerly await the lowering of prices at the big hospitals as this is supposed to eliminate “cost-shifting.”….RIGHT!
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
Remember the last time you went to the Oklahoma Tax Commission and told them you weren’t taxed enough? Remember the last time you called the IRS and told them that they needed to find more taxes for you to pay? Don’t remember? Of course you don’t. You would have to be an idiot to do this. Unless it somehow made you money. What? How can that be? Can you imagine that the hospitals in the state of Oklahoma are actually advocates of a tax on them? That they have pushed hard and lobbied hard…for years…to have a new tax levied on them? Could it be that in some strange way they benefit from this tax? Like a circuitous rebate….and it’s heavily padded with….ahem… your money! But you say,”this is about the poor and is designed to help Medicaid patients and to alleviate cost shifting.” But the money doesn’t go to the poor…it goes mostly to…well we’ve gone over this before. Why wouldn’t the hospitals support a tax on themselves that brought them your money in addition to giving them the tax revenue back?
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
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