Mind you, there are already reporting and taxing mechanisms in place for the same business transactions that the new onerous regulations will address. Sales tax and income tax are already being levied for these. Its just that the new regulations would require businesses to garner information and submit 1099s for every business transaction accumulating to US$600 or more per annum.

That means if–for example–your business buys a computer in 2012, you will need to collect a Tax Identification Number (TIN) for the vendor that sold you the computer before you are legally permitted to pay the vendor for the product. And then you need to go through the hassles and effort of providing a 1099 for the vendor for that purchase, or cumulatively for the year of you bought more from that vendor.

Or in effect, so argues Chris Edwards in Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill.

The extra paperwork comprises a kind of tax on labor. The extra gazillion forms will require a large increase in accountant and IRS labor to reconcile the redundant filings. No doubt errors will increase. Risk to identity theft will necessarily increase with wider distribution of TINs.

And while the outcome may increase business honesty and government revenue, at the same time it will decrease efficiency and add significantly to the costs of running both business and government. Whether the bottom line for the government will be an increase in revenue or not is uncertain.

If the regulations kill business, any positive change from the government perspective can only be more dubious. Health care reform apart from new 1099 reporting promises to burden many businesses already on an economic brink. Such businesses know they either cannot afford to hire new employees because of the increase in required employee benefits, or they must lay off workers they could have paid without health benefits. And government control of health care decreases competition in related industries, which historically in various economic sectors has been shown to increase consumer (or patient) costs while decreasing quality.

The recent health care legislation was passed under a mountain of private and public debt. Early news suggests the health care legislation will increase spending requirements for government rather than as promised, reduce it. Interest in government raising taxation must be matched by the opportunity and ability to make a profit. With less profit, there is less to tax. Under a mountain of public and private debt, business, government, and consumers suffer.

And 1099 reporting legislation that has promise to do nobody any good in economic hard times needs closer scrutiny. Am I misguided on this? Please comment.

Consider: When we are healthy and mature enough (i.e., not children), normally we can be productive members of society. In those earning years, our productivity goes down with ill health.

Restoring the sick to productivity is itself a drain on productivity or savings, not to mention the loss in productivity of the sick during illness.

Medical care is a draining expense. Lack of medical care is more so. The question then becomes, “How can medical care minimize the drain on productivity and savings?”

But that is not the only question. Being human means more than our net economic worth to society. And each of us has an emotional attachment to his or her own survival.

And so we might sacrifice more productivity and savings than is necessary in order to help ensure our health and survival. Valuing human life as sacred and fearing for our own survival might even drive us to support universal tax-supported health care.

The appeal of universal health care is not so much the political mantra that we have a right to be healthy (as if achieving universal health were possible), but more because we fear ill-health and its consequences.

Whatever the advantages of tax supported health care, government cannot deliver on its promises of universal care unless it redefines such care in Orwellian terms.

For one thing, such a system provides incentive to overuse. Someone else’s tax dollars will support me. If I don’t use the system, I’ll miss out on something valuable. Thus overuse leads to waiting lists and rationing, as may be observed where tax supported health care has been instituted. Those who need care can’t get it in a timely fashion if at all.

A shift from private to universal, tax-supported health care also means that government gains greater control over who gets care and even what care is. In the US, such a system would seem to undermine human rights at a fundamental level, the doctor’s and the patient’s.

It also makes medical innovation much more difficult on average. Those with political clout may have the means to institute change under universal health care, but such entities normally have a vested interest in the status quo.

Of course, a private health care system, or the quasi-public, insurance-government-pharmaceutical-hospital system in the US today, each have their own problems. Some treated patients can’t pay. Some untreated patients can’t afford treatment.

There is no ideal solution to ill health. There is only the question of how to minimize ill-health’s damages while appeasing our emotions and valuing being human.

Given the present financial challenges nationally and internationally, health care of any sort is at greater risk than in a vibrant economy. Better business is thus one healthy pill for health care reform.