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The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is urging members to take action and speak out against the 5 percent cosmetic surgery tax included on the healthcare reform bill revealed Wednesday.

The bill was proposed last July but, according to Politico, rejected by the senate finance committee because it was a “public relations battle that senators were not willing to wage.”

A special bulletin sent out to ASPS members today argued that taxing elective procedures will be “discriminatory, arbitrary, ineffective, and a potential auditing nightmare.”

Discriminatory: Almost 90 percent of cosmetic procedures are undergone by women.

An auditing nightmare:  Malcolm Roth MD said it best: the tax “leaves the determination of medical necessity up to state tax auditors – a completely inappropriate proposition.”

Ineffective: At the state level, New Jersey tried to introduce the same thing and it simply didn’t work.  Why would we assume the federal government could do it on a large scale?

Arbitrary: The tax won’t apply to surgeries performed to “ameliorate a deformity arising from, or directly related to, a congenital abnormality, personal injury, or disfiguring disease.”  These might seem like easy distinctions to make, but trust me  – they are not.  Just try to define “abnormality” or even “disease” and you’re going to run into philosophical problems.

What’s really happening?…

This tax is more than likely a product of some blatant misperception by public servants in the Senate regarding the actual value – economic and interpersonal – of plastic surgery.  To call this a “sin tax” is to offend plastic surgeons and those who benefit from their services.  If the tax is intended to usurp luxury spending by the rich and famous, they’re way off the mark there as well; just read the statistics about who is pursuing cosmetic surgery in the U.S.  (hint: It’s the middle class.)