Posted on 10/28/2010 10:56:57 PM PDT by T.L.Sink
Under the new health care law, consumers using workplace pre-tax health savings accounts will soon need a doctor's note to pay for Tylenol and an estimated 15,000 other over-the-counter drugs. Starting Jan. 1, employees who use flexible spending accounts, health saving accounts, or health reimbursement arrangements to pay for common medications such as pain relievers, cold medicines, antacids and allergy medications will need prescriptions. The new rules will prohibit the use of such debit cards becsuse the IRS says there's no way to prove the drugs are prescribed. The IRS says any money removed from HSA accounts to pay for medical expenses without a prescription will be included as TAXABLE INCOME and subject to an additional tax of 20 percent!
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
From the perspective of someone who works in a doctor’s office, we do not need yet more phone calls from patients with more requests. As it is, we’re inundated with requests for refills, work/school notes, please have the doctor fill out such and such form, and on and on and on. Not the mention the repeat calls an hour later from people wanting to know why the doctor hasn’t responded to their requests yet.
This will burden busy clinics even more than we already are.
I'm torn between praying for things to get better and praying for things to deteriorate even more quickly - things will and must get much worse in preparation for His return. We can't stop it, but we may be able to drag it out...
I believe IRAs will be used against Americans at their retirement, to reduce their SS benefits. I don’t agree with it, but if the gov’t thinks it will reduce the SS burden they’ll probably do it. Wouldn’t be the first time we rewarded the grasshoppers who played while the ants stored food for the winter; it happens every day.
As I said, I have a problem with the larger picture (particularly federal income tax itself), but as long as we’re already expected to verify what we put on our tax forms I don’t see why this would be treated any differently.
See # 23
If you want to write off the cost of that Tampax, why not? See # 23
I believe the gubmint wants to prove it was FOR YOU.
The left doesn’t like Health Savings Accounts. The concept reeks of “freedom” and they really hate freedom.
My cardiologist verbally prescribed 81 mg aspirin and fish oil, both of which are paid for through my HSA using MY money, not your money or at any real expense to the gubmint or tax payers. I would imagine that most others who take it have also had it prescribed, at least verbally, by their doctors. Why anyone would have ANY objection to ME paying for MY medications with MY money is well beyond they bounds of rational thought. The IRS requiring a formal prescription (that goes away as soon as it is filled) is an unnecessary complication of one portion of our screwed up health care system that actually works to save taxpayer dollars. If you want to eliminate a boondoggle, try looking at Medicare Part D.
Give Obama another two years or (God help us!)another term and -— “we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
BINGO!
I can fully appreciate that. But ObamaCare is socialism on steroids! Take a glance at the disastrous medical systems in some European countries and that’s our future!
Agreed. Let’s hope the turnout is good on Nov. 2nd!
Dr. David Janda
explains rationing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HnkxIh62dQ&NR=1
Krauthammer on obamacare
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4379363/did-obama-mislead-public-on-health-care
Oh this is going to make people mad and it is stupid. They will now have to pay for an office visit to buy tylenol with pre-tax dollars.
I suppose it would be possible to abuse the system, but that would almost certainly be marked by purchase of quantities well beyond what could be consumed by the taxpayer or his family.
I can only imagine that is what they are trying to prevent; I’m not defending the practice so much as explaining it.
You already have to verify. If you pay with the card then they can see what you bought. If it is not obviously medical related then they ask you for an explanation. In some cases you can not buy it with the card unless it is medical related.
If you use the "Cash" option, which is not a option with most accounts, you need to present a receipt for the items you bought with cash.
In many cases you can not even access the money directly, you have to submit your receipt and they send you a check.
So the paperwork and verification that you want is already in place.
This is just another layer on top of that.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
And supporting it.
And approving of it.
Because after all people need to be controlled. What are they doing taking things without a doctors recommendation anyway? How dare they! We must punish the reprobates who dare to buy Tylenol Cold rather then going to their assigned health care provider and having their illness recorded for the government to examine.
After all, if we don't have a record of every illness this person has ever had how will we know when to cut them off?
I explained the process of verifying an item on a tax form; that is all. I don’t believe in federal income taxes (along with ANY deductions/adjustments), and I certainly don’t believe in ObamaCare (in which the IRS and your healthcare are basically 2 heads of the same hydra).
If you claim a deduction for children on your tax form, the government reserves the right to have you verify the authenticity of that; they are simply appling the same logic to medical expenses. I don’t see how my explanation can be construed as defending, supporting, or approving it.
Because you are.
Perhaps because you don't understand what you are saying. I think I already explained that the verification of authenticity procedures were already in place.
This new rule is the equivalent of saying that you may not take a child deduction unless your child is enrolled in public school or in a government approved daycare.
Would you approve of that?
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