Buyer Beware...

As the health care debate continues, more fire is being directed at it from the left.  "Read the Bill" has been the rallying cry of the right and their near historic lock step negativity is now taken for granted.  As previously posted the GOP has removed themselves from the debate.  The real debate is happening in the Progressive World.  Just today via Glenn Greenwald and Bob Herbert of the New York Times, I read about the middle class trap that is being set by this legislation.  Evidently the biggest hit (again) will be on the middle class by way of the so-called "Cadillac Plans" tax.  The problem is of course that more and more of us will be swallowed up by this new tax bracket and will be forced to either pay the tax or reduce our health care benefits to avoid it.  Not a pretty scenario.

The tax would kick in on plans exceeding $23,000 annually for family coverage and $8,500 for individuals, starting in 2013. In the first year it would affect relatively few people in the middle class. But because of the steadily rising costs of health care in the U.S., more and more plans would reach the taxation threshold each year.

Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.

Of course the legislation expects employers to use the savings to raise wages of workers so that they can keep their level of care.  Not so fast says Herbert:

This part of the Senate’s health benefits taxation scheme requires a monumental suspension of disbelief. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, less than 18 percent of the revenue will come from the tax itself. The rest of the $150 billion, more than 82 percent of it, will come from the income taxes paid by workers who have been given pay raises by employers (emphasis mine) who will have voluntarily handed over the money they saved by offering their employees less valuable health insurance plans.

Can you believe it?

I asked Richard Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., about this. (Labor unions are outraged at the very thought of a health benefits tax.) I had to wait for him to stop laughing to get his answer. “If you believe that,” he said, “I have some oceanfront property in southwestern Pennsylvania that I will sell you at a great price.”

Perhaps this is what Newt Gingrich has discovered in the bill that is causing him to giggle with glee and enthusiastically advise all GOPERs to run on the repeal of health care in the '10 elections.  Frankly, from the sound of this one piece in the NYT, He might have a point. So far though, Democrats can point to all the true reform contained in the bill and be equally sure that the electorate will not choose to reject it.

Can the funding problem be fixed in conference committee?  Can another way to pay for reform be found? We'll see but meanwhile, I think we have yet another forceful argument for buying the sled that will put us on the slippery slope to single-payer,  sooner the better.  The question still remains, support the current bill or kill it?  Buyer beware, but stay tuned.

The Hijacking of the Health Care Debate

My first post since October... frankly I've been punked on politics for two months. It's been a welcome relief from the intensity of the two year presidential campaign and the first year of President Obama's term.  I have been following the issues and doing a lot of reading and reflecting.  I'm back, refreshed and ready for a more moderate but steady pace in the political arena.  Thanks for reading..... and now....

Look who's hijacked the health-care debate!  I'm following David Sirota (you should too) this morning and he's all a-twitter (no pun intended) about the letter written several months ago during the house debate that was signed by 60 Democrats indicating that ANY bill without a public option would be "unacceptable."  The debate is now fully engaged between the "savvy" DC elite and the progressives in the rest of the country. Firedoglake is breathing fire condemning the bill, Rahm Emanuel is breathing fire condemning FDL and the rest of progressive blogsphere, Nate Silver is councelling caution, David Sirota is saying yes....but maybe no,  and on and on.

What's happening here?  It's all progressives all the time.  Conservatives and Republicans are on the sidelines, largely by choice, with no voice in the debate.  Their political play of lock-step negativity has cast them out of the kingdom.  It's left now to progressives, liberals, blue dogs and the DC elite to hash out the health care reform into something that can reach the President's desk for a signature.

I love this kind of change.  It's what we voted for.  President Obama has a calm steady hand on the wheel, plowing slowly and inexorably down the middle of the political spectrum, allowing progressives to do what they do, while always acknowledging the other levers of power.  Brilliant!  Progressives are pissed, Conservatives are pissed, nobody is getting everything they want, again.... Brilliant!

Let the debate continue.  Poker played for the highest stakes imaginable.  Remember that the rhetoric being shouted back and forth is now between players on the same team.  Threatening to walk away is a part of the game.  Fierce debate among progressives will finally give us a realistic picture of what we are arguing about. Real issues that concern all citizens.  It's what Democrats do.  Again.... change we can believe in.