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Kansas Liberty: 20 November 2009
WIBA President Witsman: “I’m not sure that anyone in D.C. has taken Economics 101."
Small business and AFP question KHPA claim
Tim Witsman, president of the Wichita Independent Business Association, said that headlines from the Kansas Health Policy Authority proclaiming that Democrat health care reform would save money are simply untrue.
“I absolutely don’t believe it,” Witsman told Kansas Liberty.
Witsman said he believed the government mandates would increase unemployment and decrease state revenue while failing to address the true needs of health care and placing a huge tax burden on residents.
“I’m not sure that anyone in D.C. has taken Economics 101,” Witsman said.
Derrick Sontag, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Kansas, said the KHPA report failed to take into account how the massive increase in government would affect taxes.
“They seem to be completely ignoring the growth of the government and the impact it would have on Kansans,” Sontag told Kansas Liberty. “When I send in my taxpayer dollars, they are going towards government whether it is Kansas government…or the federal government. A tax dollar is a tax dollar no matter where it ends up. And the last thing you want to do is tax the private sector when they are already struggling.”
The KHPA argued that the state would save money because of provisions that require certain employees to provide health insurance to their employees. The KHPA argues that this mandate would shift certain poor, childless adults from receiving Medicaid benefits onto a private insurance program, which would then save the state money.
Sontag said this particular provision within the bill would end up costing the state a great deal of revenue. Sontag said that small business owners already want to provide their employees with state revenue but that they simply can’t afford to and that forcing them to provide the insurance would just cause businesses to either shut down or lay off employees.
Sontag, Witsman, and Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, who is a small business owner, all agreed that this provision would cost the state a great deal of money and therefore should not be counted as an “offset.”
Landwehr said, “Putting businesses out of business reduces state revenue.”
Resources:
Americans for Prosperity-Kansas
Wichita Independent Business Association
SRS gives $1.5 million taxpayer money to union