Obamacare "Cadillac Plan" Tax Used Against Unions In Contract Negotiations

What many of us opposed to the Obama health care plan warned about is now coming to fruition:

The so-called Cadillac tax was inserted into the Affordable Care Act at the advice of economists who argued that expensive health insurance with the employee bearing little cost made people insensitive to the cost of care. In public employment, though, where benefits are arrived at through bargaining with powerful unions, switching to cheaper plans will not be easy. 

Cities including New York and Boston, and school districts from Westchester County, N.Y., to Orange County, Calif., are warning unions that if they cannot figure out how to rein in health care costs now, the price when the tax goes into effect will be steep, threatening raises and even jobs.

“Every municipality with a generous health care plan is doing the math on this,” said J. D. Piro, a health care lawyer at a human resources consultancy, Aon Hewitt. 

But some prominent liberals express frustration at seeing the tax used against unions in negotiations.

“I think it was misguided all along,” Robert B. Reich, the former labor secretary, said in an e-mail. When the law was being written, he said, he worried that the tax was “a blunt instrument that could too easily become a bargaining chit for cutting back benefits of workers.” 

“Apparently, that’s what it’s become,” Mr. Reich, who is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said. 

Under the tax, plans that cost above a certain threshold in 2018 — $10,200 annually for individual plans and $27,500 for family plans, with slightly higher cutoffs for retirees and those in high-risk professions like law enforcement — will be taxed at 40 percent of their costs in excess of the limit. (The thresholds will rise with inflation after 2018.) 

State and local governments across the country tend to offer more expensive health plans than private businesses do, and workers often accept smaller wage increases to retain their benefits. Because of this, state and local government employees are expected to be disproportionately represented among those whose plans will be subject to the tax. 

New York City expects its two most popular employee health plans to reach taxable Cadillac levels by 2018 or shortly after. This year, the city projects that it will pay a total of $7,128 for individuals and $18,249 for families in its most popular plan, including the costs the city pays into union welfare funds to cover prescription drug benefits. That is above the national average for employer-sponsored health care coverage, which last year was $5,615 for single coverage and $15,745 for family coverage, according to a 2012 Kaiser Family Foundation survey. 

Expect to pay more for your health care in the very near future, perhaps the very next contract, and expect them to switch to cheaper plans that put more of the cost on you.

And all those years your union agreed to lower wage increases because of the "generous" health care benefit plan?

Well, you can forget about seeing that money ever again.

I was opposed to Obamacare from the beginning because this is what it was devised to do - increase costs on people with employer-provided health care plans to subsidize people without health care while maintaining the generous subsidies to the insurance industry by failing to provide a public option plan.

And remember, those without health care are now mandated to buy it or be penalized by the IRS, another infuriating part of the plan and another reason why I opposed it.

This excise tax does not have to go into effect, it can still be killed.

But because it is mostly aimed at union workers and government workers, the chances of it being done away with before 2018 are nil.

How's That Health Care Reform Law Going, Barack?

It seems reasonable to me that forcing Americans to buy private health insurance or get hit with IRS fines is illegal.

Yes, states mandate car owners to buy car insurance.

But those folks are choosing to drive.

If a driver argues that it is unconstitutional to force him/her to buy insurance, the state can say "Hey, we're not forcing you to drive. Don't want to buy insurance? Don't drive!"

But that is not how the HCR mandate works. EVERYBODY has to have health insurance or is mandated to buy it - from a private company.

There is no way out of the mandate and frankly, I always thought this was a problematic part of the law.

Turns out a judge thought the same:

A federal judge on Monday ruled that the entire health care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most striking blow yet to President Obama’s signature domestic legislation.

But Judge Roger Vinson stopped short of ordering the federal government to stop enacting the law.

Vinson ruled that the law’s requirement that nearly all Americans purchase health insurance coverage is not within the legal bounds of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. (Read Judge Roger Vinson Healthcare Ruling [PDF])

Because the provision is instrumental to the rest of the law, he declared the entire law unconstitutional. The law also doesn’t have a severability clause, a common legal phrase that prevents courts from striking down a whole law because one piece has been found to be illegal.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void,” he wrote in his 78-page ruling. “This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications.”

Because several district courts have ruled differently on the issue, the ruling is unlikely to have an immediate impact on implementing the law, but it is expected to increase the partisan, political rhetoric for and against health reform. The U.S. Department of Justice said it plans to appeal the decision and is considering whether it needs to ask for a stay.

The case now goes to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals - a fairly conservative court.

And of course there are five Supreme Court Justices appointed by Republicans ready, willing and able to declare the law unconstitutional.

Doesn't look good for that signature Obama HCR policy.

Maybe we can go at the education policy next.

NY Times: Health Care Reform Creates Monopolies, Higher Health Care Costs

Here's some change we can believe in:

WASHINGTON — When Congress passed the health care law, it envisioned doctors and hospitals joining forces, coordinating care and holding down costs, with the prospect of earning government bonuses for controlling costs.

Now, eight months into the new law there is a growing frenzy of mergers involving hospitals, clinics and doctor groups eager to share costs and savings, and cash in on the incentives. They, in turn, have deployed a small army of lawyers and lobbyists trying to persuade the Obama administration to relax or waive a body of older laws intended to thwart health care monopolies, and to protect against shoddy care and fraudulent billing of patients or Medicare.

Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.

“The new law is already encouraging a wave of mergers, joint ventures and alliances in the health care industry,” said Prof. Thomas L. Greaney, an expert on health and antitrust law at St. Louis University. “The risk that dominant providers and dominant insurers may exercise their market power, individually or jointly, has never been greater.”

Just wait until the mandates and the 40% excise tax on employer-provided plans kicks in and people with health insurance (like union members) get dropped from their plans.

Then the corporations will really start to make money.

Heckuva job, Barack!

Heckuva job.

Health Care Gets More Expensive For People With Employer-Provided Coverage

And this is before Obama's 40% excise tax on employer-provided health care plans:

WASHINGTON — An annual survey released Thursday finds that workers are paying, on average, about $482 more for job-based family health insurance this year as companies force employees to shoulder more of the burden of health care costs.

The premium hike, up 14 percent from last year, means that workers are paying nearly all of a $495 increase in the average cost of family coverage this year.

Employers' contributions to family coverage showed no increase at all in 2010, according to the Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

Drew Altman, the president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said it was the first time he could remember employers moving so boldly to shift health costs to workers.

"Added health costs for workers means added economic insecurity for working people in tough times," Altman said. He called the move a "recession survival tactic" for struggling employers, who provide coverage for about 157 million Americans.

Man, wait'll that excise tax kicks in.

Obama Health Care Law Forces Local Governments To Sell Hospitals To For-Profits

This should be put under the "Heckuva job, Barack!!!" category:

Faced with mounting debt and looming costs from the new federal health-care law, many local governments are leaving the hospital business, shedding public facilities that can be the caregiver of last resort.

Officials in Lauderdale County, Ala., this spring opted to transfer their 91-year-old Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital and other properties to a for-profit company after struggling to satisfy an angry bond insurer.

"We were next to knocking on bankruptcy's door,'' said Rhea Fulmer, a Lauderdale County commissioner who approved the deal with RegionalCare Hospital Partners, of Brentwood, Tenn, but with trepidation. She said the county had no guarantee the company would improve care in the decades to come. "Time will tell.''

Clinton County, Ohio, in May sold its hospital to the same company. Officials in Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, are weighing a joint venture with a for-profit company, similar to one the same company made with Bannock County, Idaho. And Prince George's County, Md., is seeking a buyer for its medical complex.

More than a fifth of the nation's 5,000 hospitals are owned by governments and many are drowning in debt caused by rising health-care costs, a spike in uninsured patients, cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and payments on construction bonds sold in fatter times. Because most public hospitals tend to be solo operations, they don't enjoy the economies of scale, or more generous insurance contracts, which bolster revenue at many larger nonprofit and for-profit systems.

Local officials also predict an expensive future as new requirements—for technology, quality accounting and care coordination—start under the overhaul, which became law in March.

Moody's Investors Service said in April that many standalone hospitals won't have the resources to invest in information technology or manage bundled payments well. Many nonprofits have bad credit ratings and in a tight credit market cannot borrow money, either. Meantime, the federal government is expected to cut aid to hospitals.

...

Health-care consultants and financial analysts say the pace of all hospital sales is picking up at a rate not seen since the 1990s, the dawn of managed care. James Burgdorfer, a partner with investment banker Juniper Advisory LLC in Chicago, said most public systems would end in the next two decades because the industry has become too complex for local politicians. "By the nature of their small size, their independence and their political entanglements, they are poorly equipped to survive,'' Mr. Burgdorfer said.

Great - every facility in health care will be for-profit.

I'm sure that will work out well.

And of course Obamacare forces people who don't have insurance to purchase it from for-profit companies or get hit with a 2.5% income tax bill.

That's going to bring in lots of new customers for the insurance industry.

It's like President Obama is a Manchurian Candidate - for corporations.

Helping to completely privatize the health industry, pushing for the privatization of the public school system, forcing UAW members to take 50% pay cuts, helping the bank industry get another 6-9 months of payments out of underwater homeowners before foreclosure...

This guy gives liberalism a bad name.

There is nothing "liberal" about him.

He is a corporate whore through and through.

Obamacare Already Hurts

It didn't take long for the Obama health care cost containment plan (have employers currently providing health care to their employees limit options and diminish care) to start. And this is way before the 40% excise tax on employer-provided health care plans kicks in:

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

But companies may be able to reduce their premiums by as much as 15 percent, the insurers say, by offering the more limited plans.

“What we’re seeing is a definite uptick in interest because, quite frankly, affordability is the most pressing agenda item,” said Dr. Sam Ho, the chief medical officer for UnitedHealth’s health-care plans.

Many insurers also expect the plans to be popular with individuals and small businesses who will purchase coverage in the insurance exchanges, or marketplaces that are mandated under the new health care law and scheduled to take effect in 2014.

Tens of millions of everyday Americans will buy their coverage through those exchanges, a vast pool of new customers, including many of the previously uninsured, whom insurers expect will be willing to accept restrictions to get a better deal.

“What this does is eliminate the Gucci doctors,” said Peter Skoda, the controller of the Haro Bicycle Corporation, a Vista, Calif., business that employs 30 people. Facing a possible 35 percent increase in its rates, Haro switched to an Aetna plan that prevents employees from seeing doctors at two medical groups affiliated with the Scripps Health system in San Diego. If employees go to one of the excluded doctors, they are responsible for paying the whole bill.

And just in case you still believe Obama when he says the IRS won't be coming after you if you are without health insurance and do not buy into the shitty plans detailed above, the Obama administration now says the new insurance mandate IS a tax that they will enforce like other tax laws:

WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Wow - so many outrages coming as a DIRECT RESULT of Obama's policies.

How many Obama lies surrounding Obamacare can you count in the above two stories?

Let's see, your coverage won't get worse under the new plan.

Except it does.

You can keep your old doctor.

But only if you pay 100% of the costs.

You won't be hounded by the IRS if you don't buy shitty health insurance in 2014.

But Obama now says you will.

And this is BEFORE the excise tax kicks in.

When that happens, EVERYBODY with employer-provided health care coverage will be dropped from decent plans and given a shitty one or dropped completely and forced to buy into one of the shitty ones.

As I said in an earlier post today, not enough bad stuff can happen to the fucking people in this administration.

UPDATE: Via Politico, the Obama administration is using the new health care reform bill to RESTRICT access to abortions:

A reader forwarded this email that was sent by Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards to the activist group's list late yesterday, which comes after a week of debate and push by anti-abortion activists over whether two states would allow elective abortion under the new health care reform bill.

But Richards is arguing the White House is now going further than the bill requires.

The key lines are these: "The Obama administration has decided that no woman in the new high-risk insurance pools will be allowed to obtain abortion coverage beyond limited cases (rape, incest, endangering the life of the woman). Not even if she pays for that coverage with her own money...

"...The president committed his administration to preventing any federal funds from being spent on abortion care. But the fact is, this announcement from HHS goes well beyond that. Nothing in the new health care reform law requires a ban on abortion coverage in the high-risk pools. No law passed by Congress forced this decision. The Obama administration has chosen to place a new burden on ill and medically vulnerable women seeking abortion coverage."

UPDATE: I should note that NARAL and other groups like the Center for Reproductive Rights have been pushing the issue too.

The tea party people are right about Obama - he is a Manchurian candidate.

He's a corporate-friendly/anti-union/anti-traditional public education/anti-abortion center-right sell-out in the guise of a "progressive."

Not that I ever believed the progressive part.

You can go back to NYCEducator.com and look at my Obama posts during the 2008 primary season to see that.

But even I never thought he would be as big a sell-out as he is.

Heckuva Job, Barack!

It sure didn't take long for the insurance companies to find the loopholes in Great Leader's new health insurance company giveaway/"reform" measure:

WASHINGTON — Just days after President Obama signed the new health care law, insurance companies are already arguing that, at least for now, they do not have to provide one of the benefits that the president calls a centerpiece of the law: coverage for certain children with pre-existing conditions.

Mr. Obama, speaking at a health care rally in northern Virginia on March 19, said, “Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.”

The authors of the law say they meant to ban all forms of discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions like asthma, diabetes, birth defects, orthopedic problems, leukemia, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease. The goal, they say, was to provide those youngsters with access to insurance and to a full range of benefits once they are in a health plan.

To insurance companies, the language of the law is not so clear.

Insurers agree that if they provide insurance for a child, they must cover pre-existing conditions. But, they say, the law does not require them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the “availability of coverage” for all until 2014.

William G. Schiffbauer, a lawyer whose clients include employers and insurance companies, said: “The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.”

Congressional Democrats were furious when they learned that some insurers disagreed with their interpretation of the law.

“The concept that insurance companies would even seek to deny children coverage exemplifies why we fought for this reform,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate commerce committee, said: “The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.”

It's not outrageous - it's expected. They're insurance companies and they make money by screwing other people out of coverage.

That's how the system works, Senator.

It's called capitalism.

What is outrageous is that you and President Accountability and the rest of the Democrats who voted for the "reform" bill didn't see that the insurance companies would look for, find and exploit these loopholes right from the beginning - literally less than a week after the bill was signed into law.

That's what's outrageous.

What I want to know is, did you and President Accountability see this possibility and pass "reform" for political reasons anyway or are you just fucking stupid?

I'm guessing it's the former, but sometimes when you open your mouths, I think it might be the latter.

Who Knew?

What I have learned from the media today is that mandating people without health insurance to buy crappy, expensive private insurance or risk having the IRS audit them and paying for the program with a 40% excise tax on people with employer-provided health care are the greatest things to happen in Washington since the Civil Rights Act.

I guess Great Leader really does walk on water.

The Great Health Insurance Company Giveaway of 2010

The papers this morning are all abuzz with the president's victory getting health care reform passed through both the House and the Senate and readied for him to sign into law (actually the Senate work still has to be done but it is considered a fait accompli.)

Over the top rhetoric about how Obama is now one of the greatest presidents in American history abound (see here) and make no mistake, that was what this fight was about.

Obama's ego, that is.

But this wasn't really about reforming health care or expanding it to everybody in the country.

Because this isn't a great law, it's certainly not monumental reform and it isn't any earth shattering new way of going about health care in the U.S.

In fact, it doesn't even provide universal coverage.

What it does do is cause more harm than good.

It perpetuates the power of the insurance industry, it mandates people buy bad coverage or get nailed on their taxes for an extra 2%, it funds the bill with an excise tax on people with employer-provided health care plans who will soon lose those plans when employers don't want to pay the 40% tax and it leaves millions of people uninsured anyway.

Here is, in full, Jane Hamsher's fine myth-busting piece about HCR from Huffingtonpost.

It is a must read:

Myth 1: This is a universal health care bill.

Fact: The bill is neither universal health care nor universal health insurance. According to the Congressional Budget Office:

• Total uninsured in 2019 with no bill: 54 million


• Total uninsured in 2019 with Senate bill: 24 million

Myth 2: Insurance companies hate this bill.

Fact: This bill is almost identical to the plan written by AHIP, the insurance company trade association, in 2009.
The original Senate Finance Committee bill was authored by a former Wellpoint vice president. Since Congress released the first of its health care bills on October 30, 2009, health care stocks have risen 28.35%.

Myth 3: The bill will significantly bring down insurance premiums for most Americans.

Fact: The bill will not bring down premiums significantly, and certainly not the $2,500/year that President Obama promised during his campaign.

Annual premiums in 2016: status quo / with bill:
Small group market, single: $7,800 / $7,800
Small group market, family: $19,3oo / $19,200
Large Group market, single: $7,400 / $7,300
Large group market, family: $21,100 / $21,300
Individual market, single: $5,500 / $5,800
Individual market, family: $13,100 / $15,200

(The cost of premiums in the individual market goes up somewhat due to subsidies and mandates of better coverage. The CBO assumes that cost of individual policies goes down 7-10%, and that people will buy more generous policies.)

Myth 4: The bill will make health care affordable for middle class Americans.

Fact: The bill will impose a financial hardship on middle class Americans who will be forced to buy a product that they can't afford to use.

A family of four making $66,370 will be forced to pay $5,243 per year for insurance. After basic necessities, this leaves them with $8,307 in discretionary income -- out of which they would have to cover clothing, credit card and other debt, child care and education costs, in addition to $5,882 in annual out-of-pocket medical expenses for which families will be responsible.

Myth 5: This plan is similar to the Massachusetts plan, which makes health care affordable.

Fact: Many Massachusetts residents forgo health care because they can't afford it. A 2009 study by the state of Massachusetts found that:

• 21% of residents forgo medical treatment because they can't afford it, including 12% of children


• 18% have health insurance but can't afford to use it

Myth 6: This bill provides health care to 31 million people who are currently uninsured.

Fact: This bill will mandate that millions of people who are currently uninsured purchase insurance from private companies, or the IRS will collect up to 2% of their annual income in penalties. Some will be assisted with government subsidies.

Myth 7: You can keep the insurance you have if you like it.

Fact: The excise tax will result in employers switching to plans with higher co-pays and fewer covered services.
Older, less healthy employees with employer-based health care will be forced to pay much more in out-of-pocket expenses than they do now.

Myth 8: The "excise tax" will encourage employers to reduce the scope of health care benefits, and they will pass the savings on to employees in the form of higher wages.

Fact: There is insufficient evidence that employers pass savings from reduced benefits on to employees.

Myth 9: This bill employs nearly every cost control idea available to bring down costs.

Fact: This bill does not bring down costs and leaves out nearly every key cost control measure, including:

• Public Option ($25-$110 billion)


• Medicare buy-in


• Drug re-importation ($19 billion)


• Medicare drug price negotiation ($300 billion)


• Shorter pathway to generic biologics ($71 billion)

Myth 10: The bill will require big companies like Wal-Mart to provide insurance for their employees.

Fact: The bill was written so that most Wal-Mart employees will qualify for subsidies, and taxpayers will pick up a large portion of the cost of their coverage.

Myth 11: The bill "bends the cost curve" on health care.

Fact: "Bends the cost curve" is a misleading and trivial claim, as the U.S. would still spend far more for care than other advanced countries.

• In 2009, health care costs were 17.3% of GDP.


• Annual cost of health care in 2019, status quo: $4,670.6 billion (20.8% of GDP)


• Annual cost of health care in 2019, Senate bill: $4,693.5 billion (20.9% of GDP)

Myth 12: The bill will provide immediate access to insurance for Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition.

Fact: Access to the "high risk pool" is limited and the pool is underfunded. Only those who have been uninsured for more than six months will qualify for the high-risk pool. Only 0.7% of those without insurance now will get coverage, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report estimates it will run out of funding by 2011 or 2012.

Myth 13: The bill prohibits dropping people in individual plans from coverage when they get sick.

Fact: The bill does not empower a regulatory body to keep people from being dropped when they're sick. There are already many states that have laws on the books prohibiting people from being dropped when they're sick, but without an enforcement mechanism, there is little to hold the insurance companies in check.

Myth 14: The bill ensures consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to challenge new insurance plan decisions.

Fact: The "internal appeals process" is in the hands of the insurance companies themselves, and the "external" one is up to each state.

Ensuring that consumers have access to "internal appeals" simply means the insurance companies have to review their own decisions. And it is the responsibility of each state to provide an "external appeals process," as there is neither funding nor a regulatory mechanism for enforcement at the federal level.

Myth 15: This bill will stop insurance companies from hiking rates 30%-40% per year.

Fact: This bill does not limit insurance company rate hikes. Private insurers continue to be exempt from anti-trust laws, and are free to raise rates without fear of competition in many areas of the country.

Myth 16: When the bill passes, people will begin receiving benefits under this bill immediately

Fact: Most provisions in this bill, such as an end to the ban on pre-existing conditions for adults, do not take effect until 2014.

Six months from the date of passage, children could not be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing conditions, though insurance companies could charge more to cover them. Children would also be allowed to stay on their parents' plans until age 26. There will be an elimination of lifetime coverage limits, a high risk pool for those who have been uninsured for more than 6 months, and community health centers will start receiving money.

Myth 17: The bill creates a pathway for single payer.

Fact: Bernie Sanders' provision in the Senate bill does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, so no, it doesn't create a pathway for single payer.

Obama told Dennis Kucinich that the Ohio Representative's amendment is similar to Bernie Sanders' provision in the Senate bill, and creates a pathway to single payer. Since the waiver does not start until 2017, and does not cover the Department of Labor, it is nearly impossible to see how it gets around the ERISA laws that stand in the way of any practical state single payer system.

Myth 18: The bill will end medical bankruptcy and provide all Americans with peace of mind.

Fact: Most people with medical bankruptcies already have insurance, and out-of-pocket expenses will continue to be a burden on the middle class.

• In 2009, 1.5 million Americans declared bankruptcy


• Of those, 62% were medically related


• Three-quarters of those had health insurance


• The Obama bill leaves 24 million without insurance


• The maximum yearly out-of-pocket limit for a family will be $11,900 (PDF) on top of premiums


• A family with serious medical problems that last for a few years could easily be financially crushed by medical costs

Real health care reform is needed. But this bill falls short of that on many levels.

The news stories today are almost all "process" stories - Obama did it, he brought monumental change, blah, blah, blah. They are wrong on so many levels, it's not even funny, because as we can see from Hamsher's piece, the only real change in the bill is how people will now be MANDATED to buy insurance they cannot afford to use.

We will have to put up with a few weeks of Obama and Rahm and the rest strutting like cocks in the barnyard. But after that, it will be interesting to see if people actually LIKE what is in the bill. There are a few good things - like the pre-existing conditions clause and extending coverage to kids past 21, but even those have loopholes the insurance companies can drive bull dozers through.

So at the end of the day, when people realize that if they already have insurance, they're going to end up paying more for coverage or lose it completely (that's Obama's "cost containment initiatives" - have people with expensive health care coverage provided through employers lose their coverage or have employers choose cheaper plans for them) while those without it are going to be mandated to buy a pretty shitty policy they cannot afford to use or get nailed with an extra 2% on their taxes, we'll see if Obama and Rahm still feel like cocks at the walk.

POSTSCRIPT: Dunno what this means for NCLB Jr. It is possible Obama builds momentum with this victory, Repubs decide they want to do something bipartisan so they cannot be tarred as the Do-Nothing Party and make a deal with Obama and pro-deform Dems to pass the president's blueprint into law.

It is also possible they decide they cannot give Obama anything and decide en masse to vote against NCLB Jr. (there are plausible policy reasons they could give - it costs too much, it cedes too much federal control from the states, etc.)

It is also possible that all the bruised feelings from the arm twisting Rahm and Obama and company had to do to pass HCR will leave many Dems, particularly ones in purple districts, less open to future arm twisting on either immigration reform or NCLB Jr.

We'll see. Public opinion on what is in the HCR bill matters. Nobody knows because the process has been so screwed up and complex. But if Repubs can win a message war on the mandates (and Jane Hamsher thinks that is where the next battle will be fought with this), it is very possible that Obama and Dems will be more weakened by the passage of the Great Health Insurance Giveaway of 2010.

Change We Can Believe In?

The NY congressman who is resigning over sexual harassment allegations leveled against him by a male staff member has an interesting story to tell about the Obama administration and the health care reform bill:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) had some choice words for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel during a recent radio interview in which he called the top Obama adviser "the son of the devil's spawn."

"He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive," Massa said of Emanuel's desire to lock up vital votes on health care reform. "You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C."

According to an account given by Massa, he and Emanuel have had tense confrontations in the past, including one particularly memorable incident in the shower of the Congressional gym.

"Let me tell you a story about Rahm Emanuel," Massa started. "I was a congressman in my first eight weeks, and I was in the congressional gym, and I went down and I worked out and I went into the showers...I'm sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn't going to vote for the president's budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?

"By the way, what the heck is he doing in the Congressional gym," Massa continued. "He goes there to intimidate members of Congress...He's hated me since day one, and now he wins."

Massa, who is scheduled to resign from the House on Monday, following sexual harassment allegations, contends that he "was set up for this from the very, very beginning," and that Emanuel was a key orchestrator in the plot to get rid of him.

Massa is a scumbag, so good riddance to him. But the story, if true (and I believe it is) exposes just how empty the president's rhetoric about a new kind of politics is.

Hell, switch the name LBJ or Tom Delay for Rahm Emanuel and the story is just as believable.

Of course, Delay and LBJ would have actually been successful at passing the legislation they were twisting arms and/or bribing people to vote for.

Emanuel and Obama haven't been successful at much of anything.

In fact, the administration is only putting the bill passage at 51%, though they may just be trying to tamp down expectations.

Even so, if it doesn't pass, will President Accountability hold anybody in his administration accountable for failing on the biggest initiative of his presidency?

Doubtful.

Unless getting some more teachers fired somewhere counts, that is.

Excise Tax On Employer-Provided Health Care Plans Update

You may remember my blogging furiously about President Obama's plan to fund his health care giveaway to Big Pharma and the health insurance industry with a 40% excise tax on so-called "Cadillac health care plans" provided to employees by their employers.

Eventually Obama made a backroom deal with labor leaders to get unions exempted from the excise tax for a few years. But by 2017 union members would pay the excise tax on their employer-provided health care plans just like everybody else.

President Obama was obstinate over the excise tax because he thinks it's the best way to hold down health care costs. You see, when employers get nailed with the 40% tax on the plan they're providing to you, they'll do one of two things: a) pass the costs on to you in the form of higher premiums and co-pays or b) drop your "expensive" health care plan for a cheaper HMO.

I was outraged by the president's selling out of the middle class and said so more than once here at Perdido Street School. I called the White House and my reps in Congress repeatedly to let them know how I felt.

But to no avail - the excise tax lived!

I, along with my fellow union members and other working and middle class people with employer-provided health care plans, would help fund Obama's giveaway to the health insurance industry.

The loss of the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy to a Republican last month put all of that on the backburner, however.

Since Dems no longer have 60 votes to get the plan through a GOP filibuster, the health care reform plan seemed at least temporarily dead in the water.

If the House were prepared to pass the Senate version of the health care bill whole, the plan still could pass, but there are many provisions in the Senate version of the bill that House members have balked at.

The loss of Kennedy's seat further eroded support for the reform bill among Dems, who see it as politically toxic to tax middle class and working class people to pay for the reform.

So nothing has happened with health care reform since the Mass. Senate election.

But Obama hasn't given up on his "reform" measures.

The president has set February 25 as a deadline for a final reform bill to be completed. He plans to have a "bipartisan meeting" at the White House on the day on health care reform and wants to have a bill passed after that.

But the New York Times reports support for the excise tax deal among labor leaders and Congressional Dems has cratered:

WASHINGTON — An agreement to tax high-cost, employer-sponsored health insurance plans, announced with fanfare by the White House and labor unions last month, is losing support from labor leaders, who say the proposal is too high a price to pay for the limited health care package they expect to emerge from Congress.

But the White House is still urging Congress to adopt the excise tax as a way to help pay for President Obama’s ambitious health care proposals.

With support for the tax eroding, Congressional leaders are searching for alternative sources of revenue.

The search has some urgency because Mr. Obama has said he hopes House and Senate Democrats can resolve their differences and come up with a final version of the legislation before he convenes a bipartisan meeting on the issue on Feb. 25.

When the tax agreement was announced on Jan. 14, White House officials described it as a breakthrough that would help clear the way for passage of sweeping health legislation.

Besides producing a substantial amount of revenue, they said, the excise tax on the most expensive insurance plans would slow the growth of health costs by giving consumers a powerful incentive to shop for cheaper policies.

Under the agreement, which builds on a provision in the larger health bill passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, the federal government would impose a 40 percent tax on the value of employer-sponsored health coverage exceeding certain thresholds. To win the endorsement of labor leaders, White House officials agreed to changes in the tax that would lessen its impact on workers, including union members with collectively bargained health benefits.

But labor leaders have backed away from the proposal in the wake of the special Senate election in Massachusetts.

“I do not believe there will be an excise tax enacted,” said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. “It appears that the administration and Congress will be taking a much more modest approach to health care reform. The cost and value of such reform would not justify using an excise tax.”

A wide range of House Democrats continue to criticize the tax as bad policy, even with the changes negotiated by labor leaders and the White House.

Moreover, House Democrats said, the tax is bad politics because it would set the middle class against the poor — people struggling to keep health insurance against people struggling to get it.

Boy, this president is tin-eared and arrogant.

According to the Times article, the White House still believes the excise tax will live in the final reform bill.

He didn't get the message that Americans do not want the very-complicated piece of shit bill passed by the Senate that has plenty of sweetheart deals in it for Big Pharma, the insurance industry and others but doesn't contain any cost-containment initiatives except to have employees with employer-provided health care lose that health care and have it replaced with cheaper and shittier HMO plans.

Here's how the Times article puts it:

Reid H. Cherlin, a White House spokesman, said he was not aware of any erosion in support for the tax among administration officials.

“The president,” he said, “continues to believe that charging insurance companies a fee for their most expensive polices — an idea that has the support of experts from both parties — will help achieve the core goal of health insurance reform: putting downward pressure on long-term health costs while ensuring that we aren’t placing new burdens on hard-working middle-class families.”

But as a practical matter, labor leaders said, the excise tax was killed by the election in Massachusetts, where the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, won the Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy.

In opinion polls and in conversations with lawmakers, Massachusetts voters expressed deep hostility to the excise tax.

Members of union households voted for Mr. Brown over his Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, according to a telephone poll conducted on election night for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. He won 49 percent of the vote from union households, while she got 46 percent, the survey found.

Michael A. Podhorzer, deputy political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Massachusetts should be a warning to Democrats, like “a canary in a coal mine.”

“Fully 42 percent of voters believed the health care bill would tax employer health benefits, and these voters supported Brown by two to one,” Mr. Podhorzer said.

Because details of the proposed tax were complex and continually changing, it was difficult for people to know whether they would be affected. Technically, insurers would be responsible for paying the tax, but economists say the cost would be passed on to workers.

Indeed.

It's a shame Obama didn't learn the correct lesson from last month's Senate election in Mass.

But it seems he didn't. He is pushing for the excise tax and his shitty health care reform/giveaway to Big Pharma and the health insurance industry.

He still believes the best way to hold down health care costs is to make sure you have shittier health care.

No wonder Dems are going to lose a shitload of seats in the House and Senate this November.

They deserve to.

I just hope the man who brought all this into being - President Obam - is made to pay for it in 2012 too.

Health Care Reform Hangs On Mass. Senate Race

Boy, oh, boy, but President Obama may see his entire administration and that reformer legacy he so craves implode next Tuesday.

That's when a special election is being held to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.

A Republican hasn't been elected to the Senate from Massachusetts since 1972, so the Democratic candidate was expected to cruise to an easy victory.

But now a Republican just may win that seat come Tuesday.

The race matters because a Republican win takes the 60 seat majority away from Dems and could paralyze the Senate in cloture votes (it takes 60 votes to get anything passed these days.)

Early on, Martha Coakley, a lackluster candidate, looked like she'd win pretty easily, but in the last week several polls have come out showing her Republican challenger in the lead.

That includes Coakley's own internal poll, which shows Brown beating her 47%-44%.

Now special elections are notoriously difficult to handicap because you never know who is going to show up to vote.

But this one might be a little easier to prognosticate.

Republicans and some independents with more conservative bents are angry as hell and itching to send Obama and Dems a message the way Dems and some independents were itching to send Bush and the GOP a message in 2006.

Democrats and liberals, on the other hand, seem dispirited and lackluster about the election and about the direction the Obama administration is going in.

Health reform, doubling down on the Agfhan war, expanding the Bush WoT surveillance policies, reneging on his promise to get rid of DaDT not to mention the trillions Obama has handed Wall Street in bailout money, have many on the left looking to send Obama a message too.

It's a perfect storm for Coakley's ship to go down in.

But if Coakley goes down, so does health care reform.

Her seat is the 60th Democratic vote in the Senate.

Brown says he will vote to kill health care.

He wins and health care reform is dead.

Unless the House swallows the Senate version of the bill, already passed, without any changes.

Then that bill could be sent to the president without having to be voted on again by the Senate.

The Senate version of the bill is of course horrendous - lots of goodies and giveaways to the insurance industry, all funded on the backs of workers with employer-provided health care plans through a 40% excise tax.

Progressives in the House say they will not pass that version of the bill in the Congress.

In which case, sayonara to health care reform.

And sayonara to Obama.

Clinton survived the death of his health care bill, but Clinton was a lot more skilled politically then Obama.

Other than giving a good speech, I have yet to see from him any of the skills Obama would need to survive the death of health care reform (and the enemies that would then embolden) and the loss of the Congress in November.

For my part, I'm hoping the Repub wins on Tuesday, health care reform gets killed, Dems lose the House in November and Obama becomes a weakened lame duck wobbling toward 2012.

I've had enough of Mr. Obama and the corporate whores he has surrounded himself with running the country.

Dems running for re-election in November are going to have to defend a crappy health care reform measure (if it passes), the Wall Street bailout, 10% unemployment, a stimulus package that seems to have stimulated little job growth (though the financial sector is doing well again), a mortgage plan that has helped only 7% of people who have applied for it, an excise tax levied on middle and working class people to pay for health care reform, and a possible double dip recession in the second half of the year.

Not a pretty record of accomplishment to run on or defend, is it?

Much of this could have been solved had Obama focused on job creation, stimulus, infrastructure building and other programs to put Americans to work here in America rather than handing money out to banks so they could invest it elsewhere or his health care reform giveaway to the insurance industry.

But he didn't and so what we essentially are seeing is a Democratic Party having to defend policies that are indefensible.

My guess is that Coakley goes down and Obama is going to try and force House Dems to swallow the Senate version of the bill whole.

He'll appeal to their sense of loyalty to the party and maybe that will work though I hope it doesn't.

No matter what, this has been a terrible year for this president and the Democratic Party.

Hell, it's not even one year that he's in office and his poll numbers are plummeting.

Heckuva job, Barack!!!

Excise Tax Lives

Details have emerged on the "compromise" between unions and the White House on the excise tax. Here they are:

Unions had opposed the measure, which, as originally designed, would have imposed a 40 percent excise tax on insurance policies that cost more than $23,000 for families, and $8,500 for individuals, indexed just above inflation.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, the threshold for families would be raised to $24,000, and would exempt certain benefits like vision and dental, according to a Democratic source.

Collectively bargained plans would be exempted until 2017, to provide workers with a real opportunity to renegotiate their benefits packages, which were designed under current law and excluded from taxation.

The White House appears to have stood its ground, though, on the question of how to index the tax. By indexing it just above the consumer price index, the provision generates a great deal of cost-savings, which are crucial to getting a passing score from CBO.

Labor officials and progressives had suggested the index would have to be raised to keep pace with medical inflation--a tweak that would prevent the tax from ensnaring middle class people over time, but that would also eliminate the measure's savings potential. But they seem to have lost that fight.

So Obama is still going to f@$k union members, just not until 2017.

Notice too that if your plan is not part of collective bargaining, it is subject to the tax sooner (perhaps as early as 2011.)

So Obama still wants the middle and working class to fund his health care goodie giveaway to the insurance industry.

Labor got some concessions, but when you're dealing with a corporate whore like Obama, I guess there is only so much you can do.

I know what I'm going to do.

Write the White House again to tell them what I think about the excise tax and the corporate whore sitting in the Oval Office.

Then I'm going to write my senators and congressman and tell them what I'm going to do if they vote for health care (HINT: it involves staying home to count Republican votes in 2010 and 2012 on TV.)

Then I'm going to watch very closely to see if the progressives in the House can kill this provision from the bill before it goes for a final vote.

Finally, I am going to root for the Republican to beat the Dem in the special election in Mass to fill Teddy Kennedy's seat.

That may the only way to stop this abomination from becoming law.

What a f@$k Obama is. Much worse than even I thought - and I thought he was going to be pretty bad.

Unions Continue Pushback On Excise Tax

Sam Stein at Huffingtonpost reports that union leaders stayed at the White House until midnight last night working on an excise tax compromise.

Here is the gist of what Stein reports:

The excise tax remains in the health care "reform" bill, but union workers would be exempt from having to pay it.

In addition, union leaders are pushing to have non-union workers with employer-provided health care plans who make under $200,000 a year also excluded from the excise tax.

Finally, union leaders want state and government workers in right-to-work states exempted from the tax as well.

"This is not simply just a deal for unions," said one of the sources briefed on the conversations. "This will take the burden off middle-class individuals as well."

If Obama is forced to accept this compromise, it absolutely will take the burden off middle class and working class Americans.

But we will have to be vigiliant to see that it isn't added back stealthily over the years.

And it is incumbent to remember that President Change We Can Believe In wanted to (and still wants to) fund his health care goodies package to the insurance industry on the backs of union members and middle and working class Americans.

It's not a done deal yet, but if the worst excesses of this excise tax are killed, it will also be important to remember that Obama would have gotten his way too had Big Labor not fought back.

And notice that Randi Weingarten and the AFT were not at all part of the pushback.

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.

Unions Fight Back

Before an audience at the National Press Club, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka let Barack Obama and the Democratic establishment have it for screwing union members and working and middle class Americans with an excise tax on their employer-provided health care plans:

"In 1992, workers voted for Democrats who promised action on jobs, who talked about reining in corporate greed and who promised health care reform," Trumka said, according to a version of his prepared remarks. "Instead, we got NAFTA, an emboldened Wall Street -- and not much more. We swallowed our disappointment and worked to preserve a Democratic majority in 1994 because we knew what the alternative was. But there was no way to persuade enough working Americans to go to the polls when they couldn't tell the difference between the two parties. Politicians who think that working people have it too good -- too much health care, too much Social Security and Medicare, too much power on the job -- are inviting a repeat of 1994."

That is exactly what Barack Obama and the Senate leadership are doing by insisting Obama's health care giveaway to the insurance industry be funded on the backs of working and middle class Americans with employer-provided health care plans.

They are saying "You have it too good now, we have to make life a little tougher for you, make your bills a little higher."

And why?

Because Obama doesn't want to raise taxes on individuals making more than $500,000 a year or families making over $1 million.

Sounds like George Bush and the Republicans to me.

Is that the Change America voted for?

I think not, though I suspect it will be the Change we get because Obama thinks progressives and liberals won't abandon the party or him come 2010 and 2012.

But I want to enlighten him that pissing off the unions and screwing union members, the very people who put his lying corporate whore ass in the White House in the first place, is going to make 2010 very ugly and send him home in 2012.

You can bet on that.

Just look at tonight's CBS poll to see where things are going - Obama's at 45% approval.

Or this CNN poll where more Americans say Obama's administration has been a failure than a success.

Or the latest polls on the special election in Mass to replace Ted Kennedy - a Republican might actually win that race.

That's how demoralized and disgusted the Democratic base are by this corporate whore in the White House.

And that's how much Americans are also coming to dislike this president.

It's Only Teachers Who Are Accountable

The financial system nearly collapsed last year because people in the financial industry at "Too Big To Fail" institutions like AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and others took too much risk and needed to be bailed out by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Many of those same people are being rewarded with seven and eight figure bonuses this year.

The financial policy makers who helped create this mess - like Ben Bernanke who voted yes on every Greenspan "moral hazard" policy decision and who has been printing money hand over fist to give to the "Too Big To Fail" institutions and Treasury Timmeh Geithner who oversaw the AIG bailout wherein he handed AIG counterparties 100 cents to the dollar on money owed to them for toxic assets they themselves had bought that were worth at best 20 cents and who asked one of those counterparties, Goldman Sachs, to keep this deal secret from the investigators at the SEC - continue to cheerfully make financial policy.

In fact, Obama renominated Bernanke for another four years and the administration said last week that Geithner has the full confidence of the president.

On December 25, 2009, a Nigerian man set his penis on fire trying to blow up a plane over Detroit. The man's father had warned the State Department that he had become radicalized and was a danger to the United States. In addition, the CIA knew he visited radical elements in Yemen and was a danger to the United States. Nonetheless the man bought a one way ticket with cash and bordered a plane in Nigeria without any luggage and flew to the United States with a visa that said he was coming for a "religious ceremony" (a jihadi euphemism for martyrdom.) The attack was only averted because passengers on the plane noticed his crotch was on fire and held him down until the plane landed.

Two days after the incident, Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said "The system worked..." when talking about the incident. Widely ridiculed for that statement, the administration forced her to walk that back the next day when she said "The system actually didn't work..." and Obama himself said there had been systemic failures throughout the intelligence apparatus that kept the Feds from stopping this man before he got on the plane to Detroit.

Nonetheless, Obama said he was not going to be part of a blame game and point fingers at anybody, so nobody was fired, nobody was held accountable for any of this.

Essentially Obama said "Mistakes were made" and left it that.

Now compare the way Obama has treated the "Too Big To Fail" institutions, the people at those institutions who are pulling in seven and eight figure bonuses for 2009, the policymakers who helped create the mess and the people in his government who missed the very obvious signs of a incoming terrorist attack and then afterward brushed aside criticism by saying "The system worked..." with the way he treats teachers and schools that he considers "failing."

You work in a school that used to be a "good school" but had hundreds of ELL's, support service students and other at-risk students dropped on it in the last few years from other schools that were closed, but have received no extra resources to handle the new students - too bad, Obama says your school needs to be closed down, the teachers need to be fired and a non-unionized charter should be opened in its place. Remember, it's only the test scores that matter.

You work in a school that has few resources, an overpopulated building, overcrowded classrooms, and bathrooms being used to hold math classes in because a charter school has been placed on the first and second floors of your building - too bad, Obama says your school needs to be closed down, the teachers need to be fired and a non-unionized charter should be opened in its place. Remember, it's only the test scores that matter.

You're teaching students who come from impoverished families with generations of dysfunctional behavior, mental illness, alcoholism and other addictions, students themselves who are in great emotional pain and act out that pain through angry outbursts in school or by simply never coming to class and you don't have any way to reach them - too bad, it's your fault they're that way and Obama says you're school needs to be closed down, the teachers need to be fired and a non-unionized charter should be opened in its place. Remember, it's only the test scores that matter.

In Obama's America, like in Bush's America, nobody is accountable for anything except for the teachers and the public education system.

Everybody else, including the president who gave himself a B+ for his first year in office (record deficit, 10% unemployment, hundreds of billions in giveaways to the "Too Big To Fail" firms, no major legislation passed, health care reform turned into major giveaway for the health insurance industry, reneged promises on Card Check legislation and DaDT) gets a pass, a "Heckuva job, Janet" pat on the back, or an eight figure bonus for taking the economic system to the point of collpase and needing billions in bailout dollars and continued access to Federal Reserve 0% interest-free loans to survive.

I cannot wait to hold President Accountability accountable come November 2010 and November 2012.

It's time everybody hold President Accountability accountable for not holding all these other crooks and incompetents accountable.

NY Times Says Unions Will Fight Obama's Excise Tax On Health Care Plans

According to the NY Times, the union heads who will meet with President Obama to discuss his health care reform will remind him that he once opposed his 40% excise tax proposal on employer-provided health care plans that will hit 1 in 4 union workers by 2013 and 19% of all workers (about 30 million) by 2016.

Obama refuses to remove the excise tax on employer-provided health care for a higher income tax on individuals making over $500,000 a year or families making over $1 million.

Apparently he feels his health care reforms should be funded on the backs of people making $30,000-$70,000.

During the 2008 campaign, he criticized John McCain for a similar proposal to raise taxes on employer-provided health care plans.

Now he supports that very proposal

Union leaders plan to tell him if this proposal is enacted as part of the health care reform, union workers will be demoralized and likely not come out to support Democrats in 2010.

Democrats are already expected to lose 30-40 House seats in the 2010 midterm elections, though they may lose only 1 or 2 in the Senate.

A 40 seat House loss would give the Congress back to Republicans.

Here is the tack unions are taking:

In recent days, labor’s strategy has become clear. Unions are urging their members to flood their representatives with e-mail messages and phone calls in the hope that the House will stand fast and reject the tax. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation of nine million union members, has declared next Wednesday “National Call-In Day” asking workers to call their lawmakers to urge them not to tax health benefits. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is urging members to tell their representatives that “such a tax is simply a massive middle-class tax hike that this nation’s working families should not be forced to endure.”

Many Democrats fear that enacting the tax will hurt their re-election chances.

“This would really have a negative impact on the Democratic base,” said Representative Joe Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut, who has enlisted 190 House Democrats to sign a letter opposing the tax. “As far as the message goes, it’s a real toughie to defend.”

While union leaders would prefer killing the tax, some say privately that they could live with it if the threshold is lifted to $27,000, say, or $30,000. They argue that many insurance policies above $23,000 are typical of the coverage in high-cost areas like New York or Boston, or policies that cover small businesses or employers with older workers.

According to a union survey, one in four members would be hit by a $23,000 threshold, but only one in 14 if the threshold were raised to $27,000.

The only problem with not killing the excise tax is that once it is enacted as part of the "reform," it will be difficult to ever get out. And the point of the excise tax is to make decent employer-provided health care to expensive for employers to continue to provide so that they either drop coverage for employees altogether or switch them to cheaper HMO's.

Can you imagine a Democratic president who has the official policy to raise taxes on middle and working class union members so that they are dropped from their employer-provided health care coverage rather than raise taxes on millionaires?

That's what we have with President Change You Can Believe In.

I'll tell you, the only change I can believe in is when he gets his lying ass kicked back to Chicago in 2012.

Obama, Unions To Meet About Taxing Middle and Working Classes

Sam Stein at Huffingtonpost reports that President Obushma will meet with the heads of major unions to explain to them why he will not budge on his proposal to tax middle and working class Americans 40% on their employer-provided health care plans.

The unions include AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA and AFSCME.

The unions are expected to tell Obama they will not support his health care bill if the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans remains, but they will not oppose it either.

Therein lies the problem.

They need to tell him in no uncertain terms, if you raise taxes on middle and working class Americans by levying the 40% excise tax on employer-provided health care plans, we will oppose the health care bill, work against it and work against you in 2012.

But they are not doing that. Instead they're saying "Oh, we don't like this, but we'll still support you..."

Like Marianne Williamson wrote a few days ago at Huffingtonpost, when you're in an abusive relationship with a guy who keeps hitting you, you've got to get out of it and stop the madness.

Currently, working and middle class Americans and union members in particular are in an abusive relationship with establishment politicians.

They keep screwing us while bailing out the richest and most powerfully connected.

Until we say "ENOUGH" the abuse will continue.

Apparently the heads of the unions just don't get that.

If this were Bush pushing the excise tax, they'd be screaming about it and opposing it 100% of the way.

But because it's Obama, a "Democrat," doing it to us, they're responding in a wishy-washy "Oh, well, what can you do?" way.

I'll tell you what you can do.

You can write the president and tell him you're sick of his bailing out Wall Street while he's screwing union workers.

You can tell him you will not vote for him in 2012.

And you can tell him you think he's a liar.

Remember, he said during the 2008 campaign that he wouldn't raise taxes on middle and working class Americans.

A 40% excise tax on our health care plans is raising taxes on us, Mr. President.

So as much as it pains me to say this, Joe Wilson (Wingnut - South Carolina), was right - YOU LIE!!!!

I cannot wait to work against Dems in 2010 and 2012.

And I have never voted Republican in my life, but now I really do see there is little to no difference between the parties.

Except that when there's a Republican in power screwing me, the unions tend to fight more than they do when it's Dem.

They rolled for Clinton on NAFTA and they're rolling for Obama on pretty much everything.

Whatever happened to that card-check legislation anyway?

Obama Raises Taxes On Middle Class Rather Than Rich

From the Huffingtonpost:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.

In a meeting at the White House, Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor, Democratic aides said.

...

The difference in how the bills are paid for is emerging as among the toughest disputes.

The House wants to increase income taxes on individuals making more than $500,000 and couples over $1 million, which would raise $460 billion over 10 years to pay for the bill. The Senate wants to tax insurance companies on plans valued at over $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for couples, raising $150 billion. Most analysts say the insurance tax would be passed on to consumers, and organized labor is strongly opposed, as are House Democrats, some of whom contend that the tax would violate Obama's campaign pledge not to tax the middle class.

"We did in our house bill something that protects middle class Americans from having to pay more for health insurance," Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., a member of the House leadership, said Wednesday. "So far we want to stay to that principle."

House members "have been very clear on that issue and working with the president to stick to what he said when he was campaigning for president, we're trying to make sure this does not affect middle class Americans," Becerra said.

When middle and working class Americans and union members with employer-provided health care plans pay more money for crappier health care, you'll know who to blame.

When employers reduce coverage and increase co-pays and other premiums on employer-provided health care plans, you'll know who to blame.

When people with employer-provided health care have a 40% excise tax passed onto their plans, you'll know who to blame.

It's President Change We Can Believe In.

And it's all to keep from raising taxes on people making over $500,000 a year.

Instead he wants to raise taxes on working and middle class Americans with employer-provided health care plans.

The Corporate President.