'Cadillac' tax isn't a tax -- it's a plan to finance real health reform (ObamaCare Garbage Alert)

Washington (Com) Post ^ | December 28, 2009 | Jonathan Gruber

[Zakeet]

As we prepare for the final round of debate over health reform, perhaps the most contentious issue will be financing. Both the Senate and House agree that most of the financing for reform should come from scaling back overpayments to Medicare insurers and providers, as well as excise taxes on some of the sectors that will most benefit from 30 million newly insured consumers. But the two houses remain apart on where to find the remaining dollars. In the Senate, the gap is closed by relying on the "Cadillac tax," a 40 percent assessment on insurance plans with premiums of more than $8,500 for singles and $23,000 for families. In the House, the gap is closed with a surtax on those earning more than $500,000.

[Snip]

By my calculations the excise tax in the Senate legislation will raise U.S. worker wages by a total of $223 billion over the next decade, which would mean about $660 in extra annual earnings per employer-insured household by 2019. Moreover, the vast majority of those wage increases accrue to middle- and lower-income households; 90 percent would go to families with incomes below $200,000.

So in the end, we have a policy that provides the necessary financing to pay for subsidies to low-income families; induces employers to buy more cost-effective health insurance, lowering U.S. health-care spending; offsets a bias in our tax system that favors more expensive insurance; and raises wages by $223 billion over 10 years. To put a twist on an old saying: The Senate assessment on high-cost insurance plans doesn't walk like a tax or talk like a tax -- because it is not a tax. It is an innovative way of financing the health reform we so desperately need.

[Zakeet]

Dear Freepers,

By my calculations, what we have is an assessment that is really an excise tax that isn't really a tax because it is a plan to take away your money which the government allowed you to keep through a tax break in order to fund a program Libtards such as me support so we can force you to buy different health care insurance because health policy experts such as me know what's better for you than you do.

[screaminsunshine]

Unrestrained Lunacy.

[earlJam]

Chicago math?

[aberaussie]

Typical Washington thinking. Tax high end policies to raise the necessary funds, and never consider the fact that with that kind of tax, those kinds of insurance policies will just go away. Then where will the money come from? Oh, yes, I guess we can just print more.

[Honorary Serb]

......overpayments to Medicare insurers and providers.....

BULL!!!!

The “Cadillac” tax would be a disincentive to firms to hire older workers, and a way of depriving these workers of decent health care, substituting the substandard “care” that obama, Ezekiel Emanuel, Cass Sunstein, and Little Tommy Daschle favor. This tax is just another aspect of obama’s muslim Nazi communist death plan!!!!

The academic who wrote this piece is either an anti-human death cultist himself, or an extreme dupe. He has colleagues, even in his own institution, who have better ideas about health care. He should just take a hike, and stop writing about health care altogether!!!!

[andy58-in-nh]

Jonathan Gruber is a left-wing MIT economics professor (educated at Harvard, of course) who was a key architect of Massachusetts’ RomneyCare plan, which served as a model for the House Democrats. However, the Massachusetts plan is rapidly bleeding red ink, driving up health care costs, and causing doctors to flee the state. None of this is being reported in the news media - except when they are trying to argue that the plan is wonderful but simply underfunded, necessitating a tax increase. Coming soon, nationwide.

[GailA]

Please book mark and add your own congress critters contact info to it. A single source is much easier to use.

Local Senate contact numbers for when DC lines are busy and voice mails full

[3catsanadog]

Did the Senate exclude union workers from having to pay taxes on their “cadillac” plans somewhere in the 2,000+ pages of the bill?

[GailA]

Ditto TennCare for Tennesseans. Several of the elderly in our church have been told to find new doctors as theirs are no longer going to be taking Medicare. And finding one who will is hard to do...even in as large an area as Memphis, TN.

[Honorary Serb]

Why is it that the current crop of leftists is so completely devoid of compassion or any human feeling whatsoever, leaving the expression and exercise of compassion to Christian and Jewish social conservatives? The liberals were supposed to be the “compassionate” crowd, after all?

I participated in Divine Liturgy in my Serbian Orthodox parish yesterday, followed by a good lunch. There was more love and compassion in that Orthodox Christian temple than in all the obama supporters in the entire country. We “passed the hat” to help a family that was about to lose their home to foreclosure. And there was plenty of talk against obama and his death plan disguised as “health care”, and his support for muslim mass murderers like the terrorist who tried to blow up the plane over Detroit on [New Calendar] Christmas Day.

By the way, I am Harvard educated, too. There are all kinds of Harvard people, even Orthodox Christians!

[andy58-in-nh]

I am also a graduate of one of "those" schools: an admission that once was a matter of some pride but now feels oddly akin to confessing one's conviction for solicitation on the wrong side of town.

To your point, though: compassion and respect for one's fellow human beings is a central tenet of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. But such religious faith relies on an understanding of people as individuals, each made in God's image and each possessed of an individual relationship with the Creator.

Progressivism and radical Islam differ in what they view as the organizing force and motivating spirit of the world, but nonetheless share a common bond. Broadly speaking, Progressives tend to be atheists or agnostics who view human "progress" (State-directed Utopian perfection) its own goal. Islamists uniformly worship a deity who commands them to submit to the dictates of the Koran, and to conquer or kill those who do not.

Both groups demand sublimation of the individual to the group, meaning denial of will and the acceptance of duty to the Collective, which is all-important. "Compassion" in such an environment means not love but obedience, not understanding but submission and control, not an appreciation of each person's unique identity but self-denial and a hatred of "otherness".

From this collectivist ethos comes Liberalism's vision of human perfection on earth, purportedly informed by love, but in reality motivated by something far different. Hence, the oft-cited quip that Liberals love humanity; it's just the people they can't stand.

[Tzimisce]

Just like in California, they’re not raising taxes they’re raising fees. :)

There’s a huge difference - maybe if you went to an Ivy league school you little people would understand....

[JrsyJack]

To put a twist on an old saying: The Senate assessment on high-cost insurance plans doesn't walk like a tax or talk like a tax -- because it is not a tax. It is an innovative way of financing the health reform we so desperately need redistributing wealth away from those that have sacrificed to earn it to a bunch of underachieving, handout-seeking leeches.

Fixed it...

[BigBobber]

This moron is actually arguing that increasing taxes on employer-funded health policies will result in higher wages for the workers.

Unbelievable.

[andy58-in-nh]

This moron is actually arguing that increasing taxes on employer-funded health policies will result in higher wages for the workers.

Right, because companies will choose lower-cost (and lower-coverage) health plans for their workers and then magically pass the "savings" on to those workers in the form of higher wages. Uh, no Professor Buckwheat, actually those companies will retain the money and use it to help pay for all of the new unfunded mandates and higher tax rates about to be unloaded on them by your fellow Harvard Genius Obama.

Next, they'll have meetings to discuss the feasibility of moving their production facilities and service centers to Manila or Bangalore.

[Condor51]

By Jonathan Gruber
'Cadillac' tax isn't a tax -- it's a plan to finance real health reform

'The writer is a professor4 of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.'

The writer is an assh@l* whose never had a real job in his life!

And unlike real people with real jobs and with real insurance, the 'professor' has one of these Cadillac plans. However he and his 'boyfriend partner' will be exempt from said "Tax that isn't a Tax".

[LouD]

Chicago math?

Welcome to "Spread the Health" - if you have more or better healthcare than someone else, well, we'll just need to cut you down to size...

[combat_boots]

AKA, the vig.

[okie01]

By my calculations the excise tax in the Senate legislation will raise U.S. worker wages by a total of $223 billion over the next decade, which would mean about $660 in extra annual earnings per employer-insured household by 2019.

An excise tax that will raise wages?

We need more of those...

[okie01]

In the Senate, the gap is closed by relying on the "Cadillac tax," a 40 percent assessment on insurance plans with premiums of more than $8,500 for singles and $23,000 for families.

Unless, of course, your "Cadillac health insurance" is being provided by a union. Then, it's non-taxable.

A Democrat version of "Animal Farm"...