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Health Care Reform Tax Hits More Chevys Than Caddies |
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Working families, their unions and health care activists are continuing their battle to ensure that the final health care reform package being hammered out in negotiations between House and Senate leaders is real and meaningful reform. (Click here to find out more about the two bills and next week’s National Call-In Day for health care reform.)
The hot topic on the blogs and in the mainstream media is the fate of the tax on workers’ health benefits that is part of the Senate-passed bill.
Backers of the tax say it would impact only “Cadillac plans” but the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) calls that an “urban legend.” Says EPI economist Josh Bevins:
The excise tax proponents say their target is a Cadillac, but in reality they’re about as likely to hit a Chevy. The excise tax is not a progressive levy on lavish plans. Instead it’s a tax that will hit small businesses, older workers, and those most in need of health care the hardest.
In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Bevins, EPI President Larry Mishel and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich blew gaping holes in other arguments pro-tax advocates are spewing. Click here for more on the call from FireDogLake’s David Dayen,.
National Nurses United (NNU), the largest registered nurses union in the country, calls the tax scheme “unconscionable” and says working families “would have their health coverage taxed and seriously eroded,” if it is enacted. Read more here.
David Moberg at In These Times writes:
the excise tax on insurance—especially in contrast to surtax on the rich—proves to be just as bad as policy as it is politically. It’s intellectually bankrupt and widely despised.
Even as union members, health care groups and others are fighting to win real health care reform, on the other side, the private health insurance industry has not stopped trying to kill any meaningful reform. Seth Freedland at Inside Health Reform (subscription required) reports:
An in-house message sent by UnitedHealthcare to its employees used language that a consumer watchdog group calls “highly coercive” by urging workers to participate in a Web presentation by the insurer’s chief lobbyist as the company fights against major tenants of the health reform legislation moving in Congress.
Demanding that workers attend a meeting on company time that appears to be part of a larger imitative against some provisions of the health care system reform is nevertheless “political harassment,” Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, told Inside Health Policy.
Read Freeland’s report at Consumer Watchdog.
4 Comments
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If a Cadillac Tax is put into the Health Care Final Draft, then Every Senator and Congressmen should be put out of office.
How come raising the cap on payroll deductions,(currently at 90000 dollars is off the table.How come the people that make under 90000 dollars pay 100% soc.sec. tax and those that make above that do not pay 100% based on there income?Either by eliminating this cap or raising it to say 200,000 this in itself would raise billions to pay for Health Care Reform.Why do these Dems refuse to tax the rich to insure the poor and uninsured?They should just drop this giveaway to pharmacueticals and ins.companies and give every uninsured person a 10,000 dollar voucher,where each time a doctor is seen that doctor punches the card which then deducts his fees from it.This plan I just proposed would be better than any currently in Congress,and it would actually pay billions back into the treasury and shore-up SS# at the same time.What do you think TRUTHSEEKERS.
They are trying to force everyone to buy expensive, useless private “health” insurance. To do that, they must eliminate the remaining examples of inexpensive, useful plans – hence, the ‘cadillac’ (subtle racism?) tax. This new law, combined with changes in bankruptcy law which were snuck in under W., (with the Democrats acquiescence, of course) will mean that we can all get care, as long as we are willing to lose all our property and life savings and eat beans our whole life. See you in debtor’s prison!
obamacare the way it is written will only cost americans more money. we need to fix the system we have in place now. starting by stopping the fraud caused by both doctors and patients. then go after and fix the welfare system