Buried amidst the insurance exchanges, public options, and (if you can believe Sarah Palin) death panels in the Senate Democratic health care bill is an insidious revenue raiser – the breast implant tax.  Well, no, they don’t actually call it that.  It’s called more genteelly the “5% tax on elective cosmetic procedures.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would raise about $5 billion over the next decade or about one-half of one percent of the cost of the reform bill.

But, at what cost to society?   Our government already taxes nearly every little pleasure in life – beer, cigarettes, gambling.  We’re now going to discourage women (the makers of Botox report that 86% of cosmetic surgery patients are women) from trying to make themselves more attractive?  Besides, how does CBO know that the tax would actually raise $5 billion?  Do they assume that the demand for breast implants is inelastic?

What were those crazy liberals in the Senate thinking?

Senator Tom Coburn to the rescue!  The conservative Republican from  Oklahoma presumably isn’t coming to the defense of the breast implant market — rather the potential that this tax could affect women who need breast reconstruction after a mastectomy. According to Senator Coburn’s rant on MSNBC, “We’re going to have a tax on it [surgery after mastectomy] because we’ve taxed elective cosmetic surgery. We’re in trouble as a nation because we’ve taken our eye off the ball.”

We don’t think it is the ball that folks have their eyes on.  And as pointed out by MSNBC, there is an exception for plastic surgery needed after a “disfiguring disease”.

This tax, also known as the “Botax”, has turned the American Society of Plastic Surgeons into a center for feminist and populist thought.

According to a report in eFitness, Dr. Michael McGuire, President of ASPS said, “Elective surgery taxes discriminate against women, given that 86 percent of cosmetic surgery patients are female.” McGuire also argued that plastic surgeries are no longer considered luxury procedures only for the wealthy.

What was ANYONE involved in ANY of this thinking?

If the Senate is so concerned about finding ways to pay for their health care bill, why not tax verbosity, pomposity, righteous indignation, fear mongering, and meaningless demands for apologies from one’s opponents?  That should cover most of the 47 million uninsured Americans.   Which would  mean that a lot more American women could afford those little nips and tucks.