California Brutally Attacks Blue Shield

by JASmius


Because apparently ObamaCare alone wasn't getting the job of driving private health insurance carriers to bankruptcy and extinction done, so the California Franchise Tax Board had to jump in with both feet:

Authorities have revoked the tax-exempt status of nonprofit Blue Shield of California, potentially putting it on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in state taxes each year.

The move by the California Franchise Tax Board comes as the state's third-largest health insurer faces fresh criticism over its rate hikes, executive pay and $4.2 billion in financial reserves.

So it's a bad thing to have run your company well, made a profit and saved it against the proverbial rainy day that arrived at category-five hurricane magnitude starting five years ago.  It's also a bad thing to raise premiums due to the enormous additional costs forced on Blue Shield of California by ObamaCare.  They should just give away free health insurance until that $4.2 billion is used up and then go out of business.  Is that what we are to understand?

Yes!  It!  Is!

The state quietly stripped the San Francisco insurer of its exemption from California income taxes in August. The company held that since its founding in 1939.

A spokeswoman for the tax agency declined to comment on the reasons for revocation.

I don't wonder.  But she needn't bother, since I just outlined the reasons above.

The highly unusual action comes after a lengthy state audit that looked at the justification for Blue Shield's taxpayer subsidy. The insurer has paid federal taxes for years.

A tax exemption is not a "taxpayer subsidy," damn it.  A "taxpayer subsidy" is when tax revenue is spent on something that is not economically viable and usually corrupt.  Not levying a tax on a targeted entity does not fit that description.

Blue Shield said Tuesday that it's protesting the decision. In the meantime, state officials have ordered it to file tax returns back to 2013.

And now you see one of the core purposes of ObamaCare.  For seventy-six years Blue Shield of California has been exempt from State taxes, even as they were dutifully gouged for federal corporate income taxes every single year.  Five years ago private health insurance carriers were "fundamentally transformed" into de facto public utilities, and now the entire Obamunist Left is entitled to tell them how to run their business - in an "economically just" fashion, of course.  Which is to say, "Hurry up and die so that we can cut right to single-payer."

Pregnant with sardonic irony, that sentiment is.