Dear, ACA — Thanks For Taxing Small Businesses That Work To Pay For Something That Doesn’t. — Signed, Direct Care

A White House aide set off a stampede of media criticism for Internet news pioneer Matt Drudge over Obamacare – but his critics don’t seem to get how small businesses pay their taxes.

The drama started when Matt Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX.”

Liberty tax, Obamacare penalty, whatever you call it, it’s a classic case of red tape. Ironic, right, that even in rebelling against an intrusive bureaucracy, by cutting the red tape, we still get stuck with it.

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17 Game-Changing Health Start-ups (And 5 Brought To You By Red Tape)

17 Game-Changing Health Start-ups (And 5 Brought To You By Red Tape)

Inc.com claims you can find everything you need to know to start and grow your business now. They published a slideshow of 17 promising healthcare startups and we noticed some trends: fitness is big, which makes sense. If we get more people moving, we get fewer people coming in for preventative care — heart attacks, obesity, Type-II diabetes. However, we also noticed how much inspiration for entrepreneurship stemmed from red tape.

Here are some slideshow highlights:

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Atlas MD Tops MedCrunch’s List Of Innovative Health Companies To Follow In 2014

MedCrunch is a new kind of online magazine covering health, medicine, entrepreneurship and technology. It’s coming from a good place, focusing on new trends and the challenge of being a physician. They listed a few innovative trends and people to watch for in 2014 and we made the top of the list! We’re not going to complain when MedCrunch writes, “… Atlas MD recently finished their new electronic medical record. Mobile friendly and sleek with iPhone like usability, it is likely a dream come true to doctors everywhere dealing with their clunky medical record counterparts, or worse yet, paper.”

Thank you for the kind words, MedCrunch.

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The Logic Of Obamacare: Small Business, Unintended Consequences

In his Kevin MD post, Stephen C. Schimpff asks, “Is this affordable health care or is it is the law of unintended consequences?”

Schimpff is former CEO, University of Maryland Medical Center; chair, advisory committee, Sanovas, Inc.; and the author of The Future of Medicine – Megatrends in Healthcare and The Future of Healthcare Delivery- Why It Must Change and How It Will Affect You. He’s got plenty of clout behind him. And he says, “The Affordable Care Act is not so affordable if you own or if you are an employee of a small business.” Read his full explanation of what he believes will happen to small businesses in 2014 and 2015 based on the ACA.

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Posted by: AtlasMD

December 26, 2013

This Hurts. New ACA Fees Coming 2014.

“Here comes the ObamaCare tax bill,” writes Fox News. Unfortunately, most insurers aren’t being forthcoming about the Obamacare taxes that are to be added on to premiums. Nope. Instead these “hidden fees” will be discretely passed on to customers.

One insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, wasn’t hush hush about it, though. They laid out the taxes on customer bills, using a separate line item for “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.” Fox News lists out all the new taxes here. Ouch. You know, when we consider our push for more direct care nationwide, it’s hard not to notice that every new patient we enroll, who opts for lower monthly insurance payments using a wrap-around plan, is actually taking money away from the Federal government. Considering all this additional revenue they plan on bringing in from these healthcare taxes, isn’t this just another power ploy? And not to harp, but where’s the actual care in any of this dialogue?

Nowhere. Which is one of the biggest problems we have with it. It doesn’t address where healthcare is failing. Instead, it becomes a bureaucratic argument over dollars and line items, not patients and doctors having healthy, meaningful interactions.

READ ABOUT NEW OBAMACARE TAXES COMING 2014

Posted by: AtlasMD

December 18, 2013

Healthcare’s Horizon Looks Costly, Bureaucratic

It looks like the sky is falling, according to the 2014 Watch List released by the Physicians Foundation. Sure, we paraphrased a bit here but there’s not much that docs are optimistic about except the repealing of the Medicare sustainable growth-rate formula.

“While the promise of a better future for healthcare remains, the current path is leading us toward a more monopolistic, bureaucratic and costly healthcare system,” Lou Goodman, Physicians Foundation president and Texas Medical Association executive vice president and CEO, said in a news release. “It is critical for policymakers to more regularly seek the counsel of physicians as they begin to implement health reform, since they are the true voice in determining the future of patient care.”

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