Tanning Tax Replaces Healthcare Plastic Surgery Tax

Healthcare reform must be paid for. One idea was to tax plastic surgery procedures. At the last moment, however, a tanning booth tax replaced the cosmetic surgery tax in the bill.

Who has the bigger lobbyist when it comes to the corrupt…err, open minded views of Congressional representatives – the plastic surgery profession or tanning booth shops? The answer is clear and it was never really a contest. The tanning industry was wiped out in a move that must of surprised them when Congress removed a proposed tax on cosmetic surgery procedures to pay for healthcare reform with a tanning booth tax. This would seem to suggest that our representatives and their spouses are now getting more cosmetic work done than tanning, no?

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In all seriousness, the health bill is very complex and full of pork, but something that is needed. The cost of medical care forecast over the next 50 years is so high that we will ostensibly have to shed every government program buy Medicare, social security and part of the government. The current plan being proposed is hardly a masterpiece, but it can perhaps serve as a basis for something better. Our aging population is not going away, so we have to do something.

The flip side of this, of course, is that we also must find a way to pay for the plan. The idea of passing a single, large tax increase in this economy is a non-starter. Given this, Congress has sought to pass a wide variety of small tax increases that cumulatively will produce the revenues needed to pay for the reform. At least, that is the idea. The tanning booth tax is part of that.

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So, what is this tax we now have? Well, it you want to bake, you are going to have to pay a 10 percent tax on the services you partake in. The tax is expected to raise $2.7 billion over the next ten years. Is it just me or does that number seem to be high? It would suggest that the tanning industry brings in gross revenues of 27 billion dollars a year. Surely that cannot be the case since skin cancer has been linked with tanning booth usage.

At the end of the day, the healthcare reform we are looking at for 2010 and beyond is going to be expensive. Tanning booth taxes are hardly going to pay for that, but then again neither was a tax on cosmetic procedures.

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