One of the few things the House got right on health care was that we ought to be taxing the rich to pay for whatever scheme they finally foist upon us. The Senate, quelle surprise, wants to tax instead the health care benefits that ordinary middle class workers get.
In the department of Be Careful What You Wish For, House Democrats who previously were hollering about Obama's refusal to weigh in on the debacle debate are, perhaps, about to wish he'd kept his distance after all.
Reporting from Washington - President Obama told top Democratic House members on Wednesday that he favored a tax on insurance companies offering more expensive healthcare plans as a means of extending insurance to millions of people who are not covered, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
The "Cadillac tax" is a feature of a healthcare bill that cleared the Senate before the Christmas holiday. But the House has chosen another financing method -- a tax hike on the wealthy.
Powerful labor unions at the core of the Democratic base are opposed to the Cadillac tax, saying that in some cases union members gave up wage increases in return for richer healthcare benefits.
Obama's preference may put pressure on the House to adopt the Senate tax as part of a compromise between the two bodies. Obama made his views known at a late-afternoon meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and other senior Democrats.
It's all Atul Gawande's fault.
Actually the blame should rest heavily on the Dartmouth Atlas Project and the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, and more broadly on the uncritical and starry-eyed believers worshiping at the altar of these two massive but incomplete studies.
Cadillac plans are Cadillacs because if you have one, you get too much care, and nothing that any sane person has to say will make the true believers believe otherwise. Still, I'll send you to Echidne's place, where you can read about just one piece of evidence that we do NOT in fact get too much health care, that we probably get less health care than many other nations. If you're not boycotting Cheetoville, you can follow her link from there.
Meanwhile, here at home, the theory is that taxing Cadillac health insurance plans will cause your employer to buy cheaper insurance that provides less care, and that this will be an important driver in reining in the ever-escalating health care spending.
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What if there IS no cheaper insurance?
Hipparchia, I am just blown away by the fact that anyone believes this bill (the Senate bill, anyway) is about expanding health care to anyone.
It seems that the only cost reduction measure is to encourage people to spend less on health insurance. But if there's no insurance they can afford, and they don't qualify for the Medicaid subsidies, then they'll just go without.
Of course, this doesn't reduce the cost to the people who need health care, because when they need it, it will be prohibitively expensive with no offsetting employer input. The bill merely reduces the cost to employers, which, as you know, could have been done with single-payer, without all the poor-hating and woman-hating. But geez, it just wouldn't been as fun for the lobbyists and fundigelicals!
As for the tax on benefits, guess whose idea that was? John McCain. It was one of the worst things about his platform. But he, at least, was going to offer a tax credit to offset it. That was a bad idea too, but he had no illusions about whom his proposals would affect.
Never vote for people who hate you.
ERA Now!
The Widdershins
Get comprehensive health care from your insurance? You're one
of the new Health Care Queens.
Welfare Queens are sooooo past-century. No, in the 21st Century, the despised (by the elites and their sycophansts in the MCM*) are those of modest means who are able to get comprehensive, good health CARE. which they obviously don't deserve or they would be megawealthy. So, gotta fix that tear in the money/power continuum.
Of course, if you're among the megawealthy elites, the fact you earn much or have great wealth indicates your are deserving of such thankful largess from your employer...and a grateful nation.
It's a rich man's world.
Madamab, I agree: Obama and the Senate version are about making as many of the hoi polloi as possible pay not only for their insurance, but more and more for their co-pays and deductibles. That's the only way "health insurance" will be "affordable." And "costs" will come down.
Unless you count lost work days, low productivity among the ill, and, well, their deaths as not costing much....
It will essentially be catastrophic insurance, with some "wellness" checkups tossed in. The people without the wherewithal to pay for the care needed for problems indicated in the "wellnesss" checkups will be labeled "irresponsible" users of the system.
If this had been proposed by Republicans, almost every Democrat elected, at any level in the nation, would be joining the masses in calling this profit protection plan out and fighting to kill it.
But this is the plan the cool, new prez wanted (why else did he hire on Baucus's former health insurance staffer and not anyone from Kennedy's staff???), and it's the one he's getting. Damn the poor and the middle class: The Corporations must be coddled and protected.
After all, where's an ex-prez going to make his post-office fortune? Not from the masses. Gotta have a highly profitable corporate sector, right? (Yes, this is conjecture; I have no proof Obama wants to be megarich and is doing anything in office to further his private prospects. I have only the evidence of what he's doing to further Corporate prospects.)
It will essentially be
It will essentially be catastrophic insurance, with some "wellness" checkups tossed in.
and it's not even going to be particularly GOOD catastrophic insurance. i really liked bernie sanders' idea -- if we can't do single payer, make this bill about providing true catastrophic insurance and spend the rest of the money on more free/low-cost clinics.
i could be wrong of course, but i think obama plans to be solidly upper middle class and would prefer to not be obscenely wealthy.
for most people, their
for most people, their insurance does equal healthcare, because most people don't get expensively sick, and therefore don't worry about whether their insurance will be there when they need it. most people are good-hearted and would like for everyone to have the same peace of mind they've got, hence their support for whatever bill comes out hat purports to cover millions more people.
i'm not sure, but i think the idea to tax health insurance benefits has been around [and democrat-approved too iirc] for some time before mccain ever heard of it.
DENIAL OF CARE--It's no longer just your Big Insurer's tactic.
Folks, welcome to the New Dems...sort of like New Libs after Blair got finished with them, but just more rapid and rapacious about sucking up to Corporations and, here our own special parasite, BHIP (Big Health Industry Players).
Reagan's ghost must be smiliing crazinly at what the Ned Dems are doing to the Democratci brand. So many thiings being accomplished by this ostensibly Democratic president, who, among much else, will be a miracle worker in resusscitating a dying, moribund Republican Party.
Insurance, insurance, insurance...
that's all these people want to talk about, having been hypnotized, by lobbyists, industry executives, and the feel and smell of corporate cash, into believing that insurance equals care; we know that's not the case. And we also know that paying more for insurance does not necessarily mean that one is getting more value, either. They have their talking points with which they are attempting to hypnotize – bamboozle? – the masses, and the media, dutiful little stenographic lap dogs that they are, keep pounding those points home.
But here's the other thing that bugs the crap out of me: they want us all to have insurance, but they have not questioned the arbitrary price/premium structure the insurance companies set, and they are still saying that one of the reasons we are in this "crisis" is because those of us who have insurance make too much use of it. I would argue the opposite: a lot of people are paying for health insurance, but the co-pays and deductibles force people to choose and decide whether they can afford - financially and physically - to seek care. In many ways, those with insurance they can barely afford are not much better off than those without insurance at all.
When people around me bring up the subject of health care reform, I've begun saying something along the lines of: "This is not health care reform. Health care reform would be expanding access to and affordability of actual care, and that's not what this legislation will do. This legislation is designed, first and foremost, to protect the insurance companies' control of the entire system, and given that these are the same people who got us to this "crisis," it defies logic that they are now going to solve it. Real reform in the way care is delivered and paid for would not sit on the back burner for another four to nine years, it would happen as soon as possible.”
This whole thing just makes my blood boil.
with you 100% on that
This whole thing just makes my blood boil.
it's why i haven't put much effort into analysing all the ins and outs of the bills, and certainly i don't want to 'make the bill[s] better'.
i'm a single payer or nothing kinda person [though i'd love to have a national health service too -- vha for all!]
The middle class is disappearing...
...and we're becoming a nation of rich half, poor half. The rich half will be able to afford real health insurance, and the poor half (welcome, union members!) will be stuck with high co-pay, high deductible insurance that makes it cost prohibitive to actually go to a doctor.
It's striking how this is what Republicans have wanted all along--to control costs by getting working class people to get less health care--by saddling them with Health Savings Accounts and making everything out-of-pocket.
It's also striking how Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, et al. don't get that.
I think you mean "sections" Half implies equality
And I think we all know that the poor section is going to greatly outnumber the rich section.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
"sections" is a much better descriptor
For exactly the reason you mention.
Only tyrants rig elections.
I think you can just leave it as
"rich" and "poor."
Try reading it with just those descriptors - without "half" or "sections" or any other modifier; the original intent and meaning of the comment are intact.
At least to me.
rich half, poor half
it worked for me when i read it. i more or less envisioned two sides of a coin, rich and poor, with no other alternative [ie, no middle class].
the middle class is truly being squeezed, and this 'reform' will squeeze some more.
ezra klein, nate silver, matt yglesias,
even paul krugman... for them, 20% of their income going to health care could be a real pinch, but it would probably be doable.
at 50-something, krugman's been around long enough to likely have friends or family who needed expensive ongoing health care, so i'm not sure what his motivation is, though my guess is he doesn't want the republicans to be able to say they've defeated obama's signature issue. the others are probably just the classic 'young invincibles' whose parents probably aren't even old enough yet to have needed lots of health care.