Below The Beltway

Remember this ?

It seems like every day that has passed since March 21st has brought a new revelation about some previously unknown part of the health care reform bill.

Today, The New York Times does the honors:

Tucked inside the huge health reform bill signed into law last week were many surprising and little-noticed provisions that will affect consumers in ways large and small. It emerged that chain restaurants, for example, would have to disclose the calorie counts of items on their menus. Who knew?

Yea, that’s the problem, nobody had any idea what was really in the bill.

Ed Morrissey summarizes the tidbits that the Times discovered:

So what are these “surprising and little-noticed provisions”?

* A new federal mandate on businesses of 51 or more employees to provide a private area (not a bathroom) for nursing mothers to pump breast milk for up to a year after giving birth. This means that businesses have to plan for mainly unused floor space in every facility, or face federal sanctions.
* Tanning salons now have to charge a 10% excise tax on their services. That should help the local economies!
* W-2s must now declare “informationally” the value of health-care benefits. This means that W-2s will become even more complicated and will cost businesses billions each year in extra accounting and reporting, which will hit smaller businesses most

As Ed notes, all of these little goodies will costs business something, which is one of the many reasons that small businesses are worried about the new law.

Of course, it would have been nice of the media had done it’s job and told us these things BEFORE the bill become law.