Last week I asked you all to explain to me why the cadillac tax was such a big deal (because it seemed to me that taxing plans over 26k was not that big of a deal), and I started to become persuaded that the politics of it was so bad it should be scrapped, but it seems like that is no longer an issue:
The White House, Congressional leaders and labor unions said Thursday that they had reached agreement on a proposal to tax high-cost health insurance policies, resolving one of the major differences between the House and the Senate over far-reaching health legislation.
Their negotiations produced changes to a tax included in the bill passed by the Senate last month. The changes would lessen and delay the impact of the tax on workers and would reduce the amount of revenue collected. The revenue would help finance coverage for millions of people who are uninsured.
Labor leaders hailed the deal and said they were prepared to fight for passage of the legislation.
I really would like to know why we don’t just end the employer loophole.
Nick
This may all be irrelevant come Wednesday morning.
Quiddity
I don’t like the White House push for the Senate health care bill’s funding mechanism.
It is absolutely clear that Obama is working according to the following premise:
a) Thou shall not disturb the top 2% of this nation.
b) If you want to implement a plan, like health care, then you look to get money from within the other 98%.
Some (e.g. Ezra) argue that within the 98%, the Senate plan is progressive. And it is! But that’s only because the top 2% are out of consideration. So Obama looks to fund health care from the “wealthy” mid-to-upper middle-class.
Republicans are no better, but I’m very unhappy to see Obama accept this two-tiered socioeconomic system.
(2% is an approximation for households making over a million per year.)
Sly
The same reason why we don’t end the mortgage deduction: It would prove incredibly unpopular even though gutting it would probably good policy.
As for the protestations against the tax from union leaders, it was mostly political theater to exact concessions. Make sure our members will never be hit by it, and get us into those exchanges, or the House and Senate Caucuses get it. But some people can’t pick such things out in our public discourse, and I now suspect the newest tagline will be “RICHARD TRUMKA SOLD US OUT HES WORSE THAN BUSH“.
gnomedad
… by which I assume you mean the deductability of “employer-provided” health insurance. Part of the reason, I suspect, is the desire (perhaps unconscious) to maintain the illusion that employer-provided benefits are “free”, i.e., do not cost the worker via foregone pay. But mainly I think this is because the initial purpose of the “loophole” was to reinforce the almost-single-payer system that most people had while the employer-base health insurance model still more-or-less worked. Now that model is failing, there is reluctance to remove anything propping it up until something better is in place. That said, I certainly agree that at least basic health insurance should be fully deductible.
Quiddity
Other points:
a) Using the terminology of “Cadillac plans” is already capitulating to this bogus idea of taking from the rich. Yeah, those “rich” workers making about $80K a year (or women, or older, or…).
Hey John, perhaps you have a “Cadillac” laptop? Maybe we should tax you for nationwide broadband while ignoring millionaires.
b) The agreement that John is referring to is what unions, seeing that Obama was pushing the Senate bill, pushed for in order to save their own skin. It protects, to a limited degree, pretty much only union workers. But it’s not fair in the wider sense.
c) We really need a new tax bracket with a higher rate for million/billionaires. The House bill would have created that. Instead, with the Senate plan we are left with an upper bracket that lumps households making about $300K/year with billionaires. Justify that.
Nick
@Quiddity:
I really don’t feel bad about raising taxes on households making $300,000. a year.
geg6
@Nick:
No, instead this bill will hit this particular person who makes less than $35,000/year. And who will not be getting raise to make up for the shitty insurance my employer will switch to save it’s insurance company from the tax.
Whatever. Pass this stupid thing and move on. I have come to the conclusion that I will lose, no matter what the legislation is.
kay
@Quiddity:
Unions ended up fighting like hell to oppose a tax on insurance companies.
I see the short term gain, but I think that’s crazy, long term. I think unions do too, which is why they essentially bought time, to renegotiate contracts, to allocate less of a given pay package to an insurance policy.
Who was benefiting most from 20% of pay going towards purchasing insurance?
Quiddity
@Nick:
I think there is a real difference within that (present-day) bracket. Lots of households with, say, income between $300 – $600K/year are people performing services, like a surgeon, an advanced-computer chip designer, or manager of a 200-person project. In that case, there is a sense of real value being produced (and rewarded with a good salary). The person is working, often 70 hours a week.
That kind of thing isn’t the situation when bankers and others make money by merely being stewards of large assets. It’s not as hard work. It’s not as challenging intellectually. It’s more a reward for one’s position in a hierarchy. They’re the ones getting a million-plus. They’re the ones I want taxed more.
Sly
@Nick:
Especially with marginal rates.
A person making $372,952 (a dollar over the lower limit of the current top bracket) pays an extra 2 cents. A person making three million pays an extra $920,000 (before deductions, exemptions, loopholes, etc).
Though adding a new income bracket and associated rate isn’t a bad idea, but I favor it more out of promoting investment. The House bill doesn’t even remotely accomplish that, because it’s a mere 5.4% increase.
Brien Jackson
@geg6:
I’m extremely skeptical anyone making $35k/year in salary lso has a health benefit package large enough to cross the cap on the exemption. And if they do, well, that’s exactly why the exemption should be ended; that’s an insane distribution of compensation in favor of health insurance.
jayackroyd
I really would like to know why we don’t just end the employer loophole.
Because that would eliminate a subsidy to the insurance companies.
(2% is an approximation for households making over a million per year.)
You are off by an order of magnitude. It is more like 0.2%.
The routine coverage of people who make this kind of money creates a distortion in public perception.
Demo Woman
@Nick: I assume that you are talking about the race in MA. If the race is close which I assume it will be, it will take ten days before the new Senator is certified. That is according to state law. It has nothing to do with gotcha politics.
John Cole
@Quiddity: What never ceases to amaze me about progressives is that when people state they are starting to agree with them and are persuaded by their logic and reasoning, rather than be happy about it, progressives double down and insult the people who now agree with them.
Way to be an advocate for your cause.
Nick
@geg6: Who making $35,000 has a Cadillac healthcare plan? Where is this? Can I move there?
kay
@Demo Woman:
Democrats are going to be scared to death if they lose or come close in MA. They were scared to death legislating at all. I can’t imagine how timid they’ll be after a close or losing Senate race in MA.
It will be every man (or woman) for him or herself.
I hate to sound so pessimistic, but I think she has to win handily or any legislative agenda is pretty much stopped.
Nick
@Demo Woman: So? If Coakley loses or comes out behind, watch how fast the Blue Dogs bail.
wmsheppa
@kay: You nailed it.
@Brien Jackson: Count me (and most of my coworkers) as people who fall into that under 35k/over 23k bracket. The fact is a lot of people covered by CBAs sacrificed wages to get good health coverage, and penalizing those people is not good policy. Maybe the exemption should be ended, but with people who are locked into long term contracts based off of the current health system, doesn’t it make sense to give them some time to deal with a new structure?
Will
Because the people on your old team were so gracious when disagreed with, especially when the person disagreeing used logic and reason?
Nick
@wmsheppa: WTF kind of job do you have where your healthcare costs like 70% of our salary?!?!
kay
@wmsheppa:
I’m completely sympathetic to the current contracts argument. You made a deal, and you’re stuck with it. This compromise addresses that, by buying them time to negotiate new contracts.
I’m afraid you won’t convince me that taking 23k in an insurance policy rather than wages was a good deal, however. The vast majority of your coworkers aren’t spending 2,000 a month on health care costs, and they’re paying premiums, albeit not directly. It’s a gift to insurance companies. While it may benefit the percentage of your coworkers with some serious health issue, or a catastrophic illness or injury, the nature of insurance is such that most of you are paying for a lot of insurance that you can’t possibly use, year after year.
The value of this policy, to the majority, is not 23k a year.
wmsheppa
@Nick hospitality industry. It’s actually not that uncommon for hotel workers whom are either in unions or in cities with high union densities. Housekeepers in particular can wreck their backs if they aren’t careful (flipping between 10 and 20 mattresses daily, pushing a heavy cart around, etc), so having really good health care is pretty essential.
Nick
@wmsheppa: But, I’m sorry, $23,000 is fucking ridiculous. My father is in construction, which is a lot more dangerous than housekeeping, and his healthcare doesn’t cost anywhere near that much.
Brien Jackson
@John Cole:
Well, I’m still trying to figure out why people who ostensibly hate the healthcare bill because “it’s a giveaway to insurers” are so insistent on preserving a multi-billion dollar subsidy to… insurance companies.
wmsheppa
@Nick That’s the rate for family coverage, not for an individual, which is much less. That said, I totally agree that it’s absurd that it costs that much. We get very, very good health care which is part of it, but what I’d really like to see is for good health care to cost everyone less. I’m not really sure if that’ll happen with this bill, but here’s hoping it will.
geg6
@Brien Jackson:
I keep getting this comment from people here, insinuating that I am a liar. Fuck you. You obviously know nothing about me, my employer, or my compensation package. But you presume to pronounce your skepticism over what I have repeated here over and over and over. Again, fuck you.
Not only is my insurance package over the amount that is exempted from the tax, but it is still so expensive on co-pays that I have not used it except exceptionally sparingly over the last 5 years (and almost exclusively only the vision benefits as I’d be blind if I didn’t).
But of course, according to you I’m full of shit because you say so.
What an asshole.
danimal
@John Cole: Seems like a number of blogospheric progressive leaders forget that, in politics, it’s a good thing to have people, um, like you and want you to succeed. Cynically pissing off friends and enemies just isn’t good politics.
geg6
@Nick:
The idea that my horrifically expensive health care plan is a Cadillac plan is a joke. Even with the ridiculous amount that I and my employer pay in premiums, I don’t use much of it as the co-pays are more than I can afford to put out and still have a roof over my head, food, and transportation. It’s only classified as a Cadillac plan because the premiums are so high and the co-pays are only low if you are a faculty member or an administrator, both of whose salaries are at least 3 times what mine is.
gex
Because people got theirs. SATSQ. People don’t give a fuck if their Cadillac is tax subsidized by people who have worse health care options. They don’t care that the uninsured/underinsured pay more as a result of the immense bargaining power their awesome insurance company has. And the idea that some people pay for their insurance post tax, but not them doesn’t register at all as problematic. Because they got theirs. They may as well be a John McCain, benefiting from a system denied to most/many others and loudly trumpeting Best. Healthcare. In. The. World. They really just want to preserve the part of the system that was integral to developing such a dysfunctional system because they were the ones who came out on top.
Oh, and just to show that you can pay taxes on your insurance and survive: I don’t pay taxes on just the luxury amount of my insurance. I pay taxes on half of my insurance starting at the first dollar. I paid almost $2K in additional income and payroll taxes on my health insurance in 2009. I lived. Taxes on your benefits – $26K isn’t going to be all that much. If you can’t put up with that for the only HCR bill that has had a shot of passing in this country ever, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Frankly, the employer centric insurance system is at the heart of the HCR reform difficulties in the first place. The people who get their insurance through their employers are typically insulated from understanding the depth of the problems in the system. Those were the people most resistant to HCR in the first place. It is weird to see people who were for HCR and want even more progressive health care in this country threaten to shut it down because they might have to pay taxes on something or because the partial step might kill off support for one of the worst elements of the system, but there you go. We’ll never get to a public option or single payer as long as the employer based system keeps people from caring about the problems with the insurance market, and I guess no one is willing to take a hit to make progress on the issue.
Nick
@geg6: The tax is meant to force insurance companies to lower your premiums. They’ll have to pay some of it too. @geg6: No, I don’t know anything about your employer or your benefits, I do know that your situation, if true, is VERY uncommon unless you’re wealthy, in which case, I don’t feel for you.
I know people who live in mansions who are upset Obama wants to raise taxes on them because “they’re just getting by”
Of course should they decided to get rid of one of their two BMW’s, they’d be on easy street.
rachel
@gex:
Not some so-called liberals. Real liberals might, though.
Dennis-SGMM
The main problem with this tax is that its threshold is a specific amount of dollars. The inflation rate for health care (Currently around 9%) means that, sooner or later, we could all reach the threshold. Had they imposed the tax on, say, the top 10% most expensive plans this wouldn’t be a concern and it would have met the purported goals of the tax. Theoretically, Congress will adjust the threshold upward to keep pace with inflation. That was also supposed to happen with the Alternative Minimum Tax. Just as with the AMT, Congress will be unable to resist the added revenue to be garnered by letting the threshold get farther and farther away from reality.
gex
@Dennis-SGMM: The inflation rate for health care is extremely unnatural. That is the whole point to this exercise. Health care costs increase exponentially, the insurance companies rake in ever higher profits through this direct dump of employee compensation into their coffers while reducing services and coverage. That is the point to taxing the benefits over a certain amount.
Edited to add that I missed some of the context of your post until I reread, but I don’t mind at all that it isn’t indexed. We need a process that will kill support for this messed up system.
kay
@Dennis-SGMM:
Dennis, if we all reach the threshold where we’re paying 23,000 a year for a family insurance policy the whole system comes crashing down anyway. The average family policy costs 13,500, if they go up to 23,000, and “inflation” goes across the board, leaving the costliest policies valued at what, 40k a year?
It’s unsustainable, for everyone, at 9% a year. That was the whole point of trying to address the issue.
kay
@gex:
What I can’t figure out is why the costly plans are magically exempted from the 9% inflation rate.
Mine costs 15k. If it goes up to 23k, don’t the costly plans also go up at that rate? To what? 31k? Where does it end?
Can we spend 50% of wages on an insurance policy? Just trade wages for an insurance policy?
gex
@gex: I want to add that this and AMT seem like non issues. Sure, Congress will get hooked on the revenue, but there is one part of the political process that all Americans, even the ones who don’t follow politics/policy closely, are good at participating in: tax cutting.
We have no trouble garnering the will to do that. I’m not worrying about that problem.
gex
@kay: Okay, I give up. The winners in the current system should not have to sacrifice anything. Let’s just dump this HCR and hold out for universal single payer and not give a fuck who dies uninsured in the meantime. Everyone wants to keep the single largest incentive given in the current system that they also think is terribly broken and wrong. Who am I to argue? Let’s keep on doing the same thing over and over and expect something to be different.
kay
@gex:
I feel as if it didn’t get bad enough. 85% of people have health insurance. 94% of college educated white people have health insurance. We have a huge health care industry, and it employs millions of people. No one wants to talk about that, but it’s true, and health care workers aren’t rich people. They’re middle class.
I’m afraid it has to get worse before it gets better.
We probably need 50% uninsured and paying out of pocket before there’s any real will to effect real change.
Brien Jackson
In other news, FDL is still push-polling.
http://elections.firedoglake.com/surveyusafiredoglake-poll-ar-02/
kay
@gex:
Well, you misunderstood me. I probably wasn’t clear.
I support the excise tax.
I supported the excise tax when I thought I had a plan that exceeded 23k a year (I don’t, turns out).
I think the tax break is a gift to insurance companies, and skews wages towards purchase of an insurance policy, and that’s a lousy way to compensate people.
Dennis-SGMM
@gex:
I understand that. I also understand that setting the threshold at a specific amount rather than a percentage allows for Congressional mischief. Again, you only need to look at the AMT for an example. The original intent of the AMT was to impose a tax on the very wealthiest. Congress neglected to adjust the threshold for it in 2009 (They were too busy.) so in 2010 many more not-the-wealthiest taxpayers will be subject to the AMT.
In the end, I’m afraid that all this tax will accomplish is to cause the insurers to raise deductibles and co-pays to astronomical amounts in order to keep even the most bare-bones plans below the threshold. The rise in health care costs has more to do with the fee-for-service model than it does overly bountiful health care plans. The bill before Congress does nothing to address fee-for-service and so health care cost inflation will remain unnaturally high because health care providers and insurers both profit from providing unnecessary or even redundant services and procedures.
gwangung
@Will: Actually, sir, they were. Particularly when people give some strong tactical thinking about moving the debate to the left. What John is thinking about are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of people screaming about being stabbed in the back while using some rather stupid reasoning designed just to stop debate entirely.
Sly
@Dennis-SGMM:
Assuming medical inflation remains constant or increases despite a bevy of other cost controls. Which is a big assumption.
The goal of the tax is to reduce expenditures, not tax them. The JCT scoring posits that the lion’s share of the revenue generated by the tax will come from profits not put into premium expenditures, gained from payroll and income taxes on increased wages and corporate taxes on investments.
Fiscal drag happens because the AMT exemption and its phaseout period haven’t been indexed to inflation since the mid eighties. That’s the cause of the AMT’s bracket creep, not that the tax itself isn’t indexed to inflation.
I hear this often. I hear that Congress increased the exemption in 2006 and again in 2009 not nearly as much.
gex
Bad link. Deleted.
Bob In Pacifica
As a retired federal employee and union member, I think that this compromise sucks. Granted, it’s how politics works, you get your best deal and that’s apparently what the unions did, but it’s divisive with the rest of the working class. If you control a third of the people maybe you can ride out the storm. But unionized workers are down to something like ten percent of the working class. While unions brought about most of the reforms to the American working class over the last century and a half, most people don’t connect the forty-hour week, overtime, workplace safety, etc., most people don’t connect that. So the immediate response to the union deal is that they are doing an “I Got Mine”. Which is true. But that’s what all parties have been doing here.
I think that the reason why organized labor should back away from this deal is because this particular healthcare “reform” is not going to survive fiscally. Most on the left are dissatisfied with it, the right is against everything because of self-imposed myths. Who supports the bill? Insurance companies.
So what happens in a few years when the Dems lose control of Congress? The Repubs will eliminate the exclusion of union-negotiated health plans. Voila! An immediate pay cut directed mostly at unionized workers.
I am hoping this stinking mess collapses of its own malodorous gravity and some more modest expansion of Medicare as insurance of last resort can be substituted.
geg6
@Nick:
I sure wish people like you would quit talking to me like I’m developmentally disabled or insinuating I am a liar. I know what the bill is supposed to do. And it’s not going to do that, regardless of how many times you say it. What it will do is force me into an even worse health care plan that I won’t be able to use even more than the one I have now that I can’t use. And I already mentioned that I make less than $35,000/year, so I’m NOT wealthy, unlike the faculty and administration with whom I work and for whom this stupid goddam insurance was put into place for.
As I said earlier to another asshole that presumes to know more about me than I do, fuck you.
Tsulagi
@Dennis-SGMM:
Yep. Some sooner than others…
__
Yeah, there’s that brilliant side too.
Congressional Dems brainstorming: “How do we pay for this big expansion of the current health care mess? I know, I know! One way is we slap a 40% tax on our traditional supporters! Union workers like those overpaid teachers who negotiated for good health benefits. Plus those in states like CA and NY where health care costs/ premium rates are higher. Urban areas with higher costs in other states can join in paying a few years later. You know, where we get most of our support. We can tell them it’s their own fault for having a stinking Cadillac. Good thing it would take a long time for southern states to reach that tax threshold. We wouldn’t Rs in those states to get mad at us and call us names. Better to screw over our own supporters.”
Brilliance in action.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Except that the way they solved the problem was by introducing a whole lot of complicated exceptions in a backroom deal with the unions (that’s how it will be portrayed).
Health care hasn’t been addressed by creating a sensible policy and steadfastly pushing for it, it has been created through an endless series of winks, nods, handshakes, and arcane compromises with every vested interest under the sun. What we’ve got right now is so byzantine that even those of us who’ve been trying to follow it don’t understand it. The Republicans are going to portray this as a typical Democratic initiative of taxation and rampant bureaucracy, and they won’t be entirely wrong about that.
And yes, I know that the immediate response is that in the political realities of Washington this was the only way to build the bill. If that’s the case I’m starting to think it should never have been attempted in the first place.
The Raven
It may still be an issue. Apparently the terms are changing, perhaps even as we speak. Detailed analysis (David Dayen at FDL.)
Mark
@geg,
I understand your concerns about your own situation, but I don’t think you’ve grasped what this legislation really does.
People who make $35,000 a year generally have shit benefits, not plans that fall under the excise tax. 30% are uninsured at some point over the course of the year. That figure is much higher among people between 55 and 65.
Now that the excise tax exemption has been age- and region-adjusted, and it doesn’t apply to dental and vision coverage, a 55-year-old person would need a plan with a 2010 employer-contribution of $11,000 for medical benefits alone. In a high-cost state (eg NY), that might be $14,000. When we account for employee contributions, we’re often in the $16,000 range.
I’m sorry, but no one who makes $35,000 a year but has a medical plan that expensive is going to have that same plan in three years whether this excise tax is in the bill or not. I don’t believe such a person actually exists, but even if they do, their compensation has been distorted by a government subsidy to the insurance companies. That’s what you want to keep intact?
If you end up buying insurance on the exchanges, where you will receive a government subsidy to do so because you are under 400% of the FPL. I find it hard to square the notion of being eligible for income-based subsidies and having the kind of insurance plan that wall street executives have.
The irony is that you claim that you can’t even use your insurance now because the out-of-pocket portion is too expensive. Yet you want the government to continue subsidizing a plan that you admit is so grossly inefficient. I will guarantee you that if your employer gave you the money it spends on your benefits, you’ll be able to go the exchanges and way better insurance for way less money.
Dennis-SGMM
@Tsulagi:
Exactly. A cynic might suspect that the tax trigger was fixed to a dollar amount to ensure that outcome. That close to one in five single-care plans will fall under the tax at the outset does not bode well for the future. This what you get when any of the alternatives that would have actually forced down health care costs were either ignored or bargained away in return for chimerical Senate votes: connect the Treasury to the health care industry and then wait for prices to go down.
Quiddity
@John Cole:
You were the first to get snippy on this topic. In fact, your tone has shifted markedly in the last month, in particular regarding the Senate funding approach (e.g. your “hill to die on” post).
I don’t know why, but there it is. When people like you defend clear mendacity by Ezra and others (specifically on the dual-use of the word “costs”), it’s no longer a reasoned debate.
I’m not an FDL person. I will still vote for Democrats over Republicans. But I’m not an Obama-bot, willing to defend Obama’s support for the Senate’s funding plan. When people point out that the Senate plan is (a) bad politics, and (b) doesn’t reduce the price for healt care, then argue the points. Don’t go ad hominem.
There are non-FDL people who think Obama is making a mess of things by not leaning on the Senate, but leaning on the House, which is not the way to get real reform.
geg6
@Mark:
And I will guarantee that this is not gonna happen.
Again, please quit condescending to me, which is no better than calling me a liar like others here have done. I understand the damn legislation. I understand what it will do. I also understand what not doing anything will. I hate the bill and I’ve already called for them to pass the goddam thing and be done with it.
wolfetone
The trouble with this is simple: a lot of employers are going to trade their so-called Cadillac plans for less expensive ones, which would be fine except that the companies’ employees aren’t going to see a commensurate wage increase. Does anyone really think workers will win when renegotiating in the current economic climate? Just take a look at the hits labor has taken since the early 80s, especially during the boom years under Clinton.
Mark
@geg
You don’t actually appear to understand the legislation. It has been changed so that it won’t actually apply to you.
The entire premise behind your argument is that medical premiums will continue to rise 90% faster than GDP and therefore in ten years, 10% of the subsidy you receive for health insurance will get clawed back.
I’m sorry, but if that’s what happens (and it’s a plausible scenario barring huge cost controls) then you won’t have employer-provided health insurance, and it won’t be for one second because of the excise tax.
You want the government to continue subsidizing a benefit that you have described as so totally inefficient that you can’t even use it. If your benefits are truly as bad as you say, then why do you fear an attempt to improve them?
geg6
@Mark:
Ummmm, how does it not apply to me? I’m not in a union; I am professional staff. My health care package costs $11,000/year, according to my HR webpage. I am single with no children. According to Ezra Klein, there is not anything that is going to change my situation.
And will say one last time before writing you off as a stupid fucking idiot, that I don’t give a crap at this point. Whatever is going to pass due to this president and this congress is going to fuck me up the ass any way you look at it. So is doing nothing. So I JUST DON’T CARE. I just want all the assholes like you to stop telling me how I should LOVE this pile of garbage, although I am quite well aware that there is nothing to love. It’s no different than the GOP telling me I should love the wonderful world of my employer provided health care plan. Both groups are assholes and, apparently, take me for one.
Ailuridae
@Brien Jackson:
Either 1) They don’t think clearly or 2) They are being intellectually dishonest
Mark
@geg –
First of all, your total medical premiums are not $11,000. Some portion of that is dental and vision, so that’s exempt.
Second, you pay some portion of the premiums yourself. That is unaffected and it brings you further from the threshold.
Third, you say that you’re in your 50s. So your limits would be adjusted upwards because your plan is more expensive than average.
Fourth, I believe you said you work in Pennsylvania, which has higher-than-average costs. So your limit would get ratcheted up again.
You are thousands of dollars away from the threshold. The bill was just changed so that it didn’t affect you. But, like you said, you “don’t give a fuck,” so you’re not paying attention to these things.
As many people have pointed out, your employer is the one “fucking you in the ass”. That’s not Obama’s fault.
Flugelhorn
Heh. This deal with unions is bullshit and the tax on a specific dollar amount is bullshit. This whole bill is bullshit.
Cadillac Tax to pay for things unless it hits the people who vote for Democrats, right? Bullshit. Total fucking bullshit.
Fuck this fucking bill.
elaine
I’ve enjoyed the lengthy debates on healthcare here, and have been lurking awhile. It’s helped me understand what people love, hate or are willing to accept in this mess of a political battle. I think this bill is the best of a bad bet — and it will get a lot of uncovered people insurance.
That said, what is with the intense focus on geg’s situation? She’s not unconvinced about the bill, just pointing out that like any change, there are unintended consequences, and she’s one of them. And some people do inhabit the statistically rare spots. I think we’ll be better off on the whole passing a bill that starts moving away from employer-based insurance (which is a subsidy of the poor to the middle-class, like the mortgage deduction). That doesn’t mean everyone will be better off. Not such a hard concept is it?
Mark
@elaine – I think we’ve been discussing geg’s comments because they don’t make sense. Her insurance premiums are incredibly expensive but she can’t use her insurance because her out-of-pocket costs are too high. And still she is concerned that her really bad health insurance might be affected by an excise tax that might apply to 10% of her policy in ten years?
I understand the “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” crowd – they’ve got theirs and they don’t want anyone else to have anything. But the “Keep your government hands off my crappy insurance” crowd makes no sense to me. If you can’t go to the doctor right now, how could your situation get worse?
It’s like people with exorbitant individual insurance premiums because of pre-existing conditions who got worked up over the excise tax. First, it doesn’t apply to them, and second, the health care bill eliminates the surcharges they pay for pre-existing conditions. People are so fearful of change that they cling to something broken rather than allowing it to be fixed.
FearItself
I realize I’m late to this discussion, but Sir Charles at Cogitamus, who has some professional experience with how Unions provide health care to their members, provided some details about that process that might help us better understand the objections unions (as a coalition) have to the excise tax.