Update On Excise Tax

Sam Stein reports union leaders continue to battle Obama on the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans. They met with the president again yesterday to hammer out some compromise:

Negotiators are poised to raise the threshold of the tax, making it so that family plans valued at $25,000 (not $23,000) are now taxed. In exchange, a small tax would be placed on the wealthy to help fill in the funding hole created by raising the tax threshold. There is also talk of exempting all collectively bargained health care plans from the so-called Cadillac tax.

There is no word yet as to whether this would be acceptable for union leaders. White House officials, meanwhile, have refused to comment about ongoing negotiations.

Still not good enough. Lots of people have plans that have not been collectively bargained and raising the tax threshold on family plans only delays who gets taxed by this.

Kill the excise tax or kill the bill.

Dennis Kucinich on The Ed Schultz Show last night said over and over again that the excise tax remains the most "significant roadblock" to health care reform, there is "great resistance" to the tax and "this bill is in trouble if they think they can keep the excise tax in there."

Kill the excise tax or kill the bill.

This president thinks funding his health care reform giveaway to the health insurance industry can be funded on the backs of working and middle class Americans and union members with this excise tax even though he promised not to raise taxes on middle and working class Americans.

Kill the excise tax or kill the bill.