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.

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.

The Obama Administration and Labor

Here's another example of the "pro-labor" Obama administration going out of its way to help unions:

In "Overhaul", his upcoming chronicle of his reign as "car czar," Steven Rattner offers an insider's account of the Obama administration's rescue of the auto industry. And he pulls no punches when it comes to describing the foibles of such heavyweights as Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Sheila Bair.

...

Rattner depicts White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as a force to be reckoned with who disparaged unions -- once quipping "Fuck the UAW" -- and who effectively supervised Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during his first rocky months on the job by dictating his public appearances and staff picks.

...

Emanuel could also be spectacularly blunt, once telling Rattner during a meeting about GM and Chrysler's massive problems and potential bankruptcies: "Why even save GM?" When Rattner adviser Ron Bloom noted that tens of thousands of autoworker jobs were at stake, Emanuel huffed, "Fuck the UAW," referring to the United Auto Workers union.

...

Though Rattner praised Obama's thoughtful manner when he calmly executed his decisions, the car czar notes that the president seemed to have it in for the automakers from the beginning.

At his first substantive sit-down with his advisers a week after the election, when the U.S. auto industry's problems were broached, Obama quipped:

"Why can't they make a Corolla?"

Later, when Obama was informed of the plan to give ousted GM Chief Rick Wagoner $7.1 million, his jaw muscles tightened and Rattner writes: "Suddenly I felt that I was indeed in the presence of a community organizer..."

But Rattner does emphasize that Obama didn't seem to prefer the giant autoworkers unions, either, stating that "no one in the Obama administration ever asked us to favor labor for political reasons."

Ah, yes - "Fuck the UAW!"

That sounds SOOOOOOO pro-union.

Just like the Obama administration forcing new UAW members to take 50% pay cuts compared to the pay older UAW members receive.

Or President Obama insisting that union members with employer-provided health care plans pay a 40% excise tax to pay for his health care "reform" plan/giveaway to the insurance companies.

Or President Obama pushing his Blame Schools/Fire Teachers Race to the Top program and cheering when teachers in Rhode Island were fired.

And of course labor leaders, rather than return the "Fuck you's!" to the administration, bend over backwards to accommodate them and support them come election time.

Just saw the UAW president on CNBC and when asked about the Rahm Emanuel quote he dismissed it and said something like "This administration is very pro-labor."

Uh, huh.

Pushing higher taxes, lower wages and reduced job protections for union members does NOT qualify as "pro-labor" in my estimation.

As I have said before, as long as this dysfunctional relationship exists where the administration abuses labor, disparages them behind the scenes and works against their interests while the unions take it and support Dems and Obama because "the Republican alternative would be worse," labor union members are going to continue to get screwed.

Until the labor movement finally says "No, we don't care if you SAY you're pro-labor, SHOW us how you're pro-labor," labor unions and union members are going to continue to get abused by corporate whore Dems like Obama and Emanuel.

As for the Emanuel "quip" about the UAW, I would like to adapt a Rodney Dangerfield line from the movie "Back to School" in reply:

"What's that, Emanuel? Fuck me? Hey, Emanuel, do you read lips? Fuck you!!!!!!"

Oh, and President Obama?

Hope you can read lips too.

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 "Pledges" Labor Support

Really?

Uh, huh - really:

President Barack Obama vowed Wednesday to keep fighting for union-friendly legislation, as he urged labor leaders to go to the polls for Democrats in the upcoming elections.

“You have to remind them for the next three months this election's a choice,” he told the AFL-CIO Executive Council at the Washington Convention Center. “You've got these folks who drove America's economy into a ditch. And for the last 20 months, we put on our boots and we got into the mud.”

Obama pointed out that his administration has “consistently” carried out policies to strengthen workers’ salaries and benefits. He passed the Fair Pay Act to end wage disparities between men and women doing the same jobs, extended unemployment benefits and reversed Bush-era executive orders designed to bust up organized labor.

“And we are going to keep on fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” said Obama, as union leaders gave him a standing ovation for his commitment to a controversial “card check” bill that would make it easier to create unions in non-union workplaces. Acknowledging that pushing the legislation through the Senate will “continue to be tough,” the president again pledged to “keep on pushing.”

Let's see the way President Obama has supported labor.

He devised the Race to the Top program to fire unionized teachers, close schools and re-open them as non-unionized charter schools run by for-profit corporations.

He refused to raise taxes on people making over $500,000 a year to pay for his health care "reform" bill. Instead he insisted there be a 40% excise tax on people with employer-provided health care plans - a scheme that will hit many union workers in the years to come and will cause their employers to scale back their health care plans or drop them altogether.

He insisted the UAW take 50% pay cuts at GM factories, creating a two-tiered pay system wherein old workers make $28 an hour, newly hired workers make $14 an hour. Even though GM was willing to pay newly hired workers more, perhaps as much as $18 an hour.

Meanwhile in the financial bailout of Wall Street, his secretary of the treasury, Timmeh Geithner, made sure AIG's counterparties got 100 cents to the dollar for the crap on their books that was actually worth maybe 15 cents and didn't do anything to take back the bonus money AIG paid out to its executive staff with taxpayers money.

And Rahm Emanuel is telling business leaders behind the scenes that Obama isn't anti-business and they should know that because he has been willing to go right at the teachers unions to gut their power and render them useless.

As for card check, Obama hasn't lifted a finger to get that passed, doesn't seem to actually care whether it is passed or not and only talks up labor issues when it gets around election time.

So I understand that the Republican alternative is very anti-working class and anti-middle class as well as anti-union.

But it's not as if the Obama administration has been all that union or worker-friendly either.

And when he says that he has looked out for union workers, well, that's just a joke.

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.

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.

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.

Obama Wants Tax On Union Health Care Plans Over Millionaire Tax

The Senate's health care proposal that levies a 40% excise tax on so-called "Cadillac" employer-provided health care plans that exceed $8,000 a year in cost is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to hit 58 million people by 2019.

The House version of the bill levies a "millionaire's surplus tax" on people making over a million dollars.

Firedoglake reports that the Obama administration wants the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans rather than the surplus tax on millionaires:

• Excise tax: unions and progressive leaders are pushing strongly for the House’s version of financing, dropping the excise tax on high-end insurance plans that financed part of it and substituting it with a surtax on millionaires. Sen. Debbie Stabenow also noted today that the excise tax should be relaxed or eliminated. The White House has said that the excise tax is a major cost control component of reform, so they’ve staked some of the bill on it. In addition, Ben Nelson has objected to the House surtax on millionaires, saying “that would break” his promise to vote for the bill.

Slate says pretty much all employer-provided health care plans could qualify for the excise tax:

How do I know if my insurance plan is a "Cadillac plan"? Look at the cost. The finance committee defines high-cost or "Cadillac" as any plan with premiums higher than $8,000 for individuals or $21,000 for families. Keep in mind that these figures include everything you and your employer spend on health care except for the deductible: premiums for medical (the portions paid by you and by your employer), dental, and vision coverage, as well as any money you put into a flexible spending account, which allows you to set aside pretax money to cover medical costs. Since your pay stub may show only your personal contribution—not that of your employer—the best way to find out the total cost of your plan is to ask your human resources liaison. Many companies already list their employees' total premiums on their W-2 tax forms. The bill passed by the finance committee would make that mandatory.

What does a "Cadillac plan" offer? The top-of-the-line plans—say, the $40,000-a-year plan offered to Goldman Sachs CEOs—likely have no copayments, no deductibles, few limits on how much you can spend, and no need for prior authorization, i.e., to get special permission before you get treated.

But many not-so-fancy plans also qualify as "Cadillacs" under the finance committee's definition. That's because the term refers to total cost—not a particular set of benefits—and many factors—like the state you live in, the size of your company, and the makeup of that company's work force—can affect costs. Premiums tend to be significantly higher in Massachusetts than in Idaho, for example. (The employer/employee contribution also varies by state.) The smaller the business, the fewer employees who go into the pool, the less leverage the organization has to negotiate lower premiums. And if the workers have an average age of, say, 54, their premiums are going to be a lot higher than if the average is 25.

A lot of basic benefits packages, then, can still qualify as "Cadillacs." (The Senate finance committee has made exceptions for workers with high-risk jobs like firefighters, whose premiums tend to be high.) The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the tax would hit 14 percent of family health policies and 19 percent of individual policies in 2013, when the legislation would take effect. Those numbers would rise to 37 percent and 41 percent, respectively, by 2019, since premiums are expected to rise faster than inflation.

Those above figures are from the Joint Committee on Taxation; as noted earlier, the CBO estimates the excise tax will hit a much larger number of people by 2019 - 58 million.

So there you have it - Obama, the man who was elected with the help of union members and pledged to deliver change we could all believe in from the previous eight years of "Screw the Middle and Working Classes - Pay Off The Wealthy" has decided to tax middle and working class Americans rather than millionaires because he wants to say this health care "reform" plan that essentially forces 33 million people to buy private insurance and provide insurance companies with billions of extra revenue dollars is "revenue neutral."

I can't wait to deliver a message to this corporate shill in 2010 and 2012. Judging by how Dems and liberals are responding to polls these days about the president and the Democratic Party, I know I'm not the only one.

Senate Health Care Bill Will Tax Union Health Care Plans

The Senate bill passed last night will raise taxes on union members with health care benefits. This includes UFT members.

Here's how SEIU describes what is in the Senate bill:

The tax would be paid beginning in 2013 on 40% of the amount by which a health plan's premiums exceeded a dollar cost. Currently, the Senate bill would begin taxing your health care benefits if they cost more than $8,500 for individual or $23,000 for family coverage in that year.

...

EXCLUSIONS:

* Some for age and occupation:
For early retirees and certain "high-risk" occupations such as firefighters and law enforcement--the amounts are higher--$9,850 for individual and $26,000 for family coverage.

* Some for high-cost states:
For workers in the 17 highest cost states, there will be higher limits for the first 3 years. If you live in a high cost state, the amount in 2013 would be $10,200 for individual and $31,200 for family coverage.

Firedoglake has some good coverage on the excise tax on "cadillac health care plans." Jane Hamsher, quoting the CBO, says that by 2016 the excise tax will affect 19% of the people with employer-provided health care plans - that is roughly 30 million people. By 2019, the excise tax will affect 58 million American. You can be sure that will be every union member in America.

Now let me be very clear that what the Senate did last night was done with the approval of the president. The Obama administration supports this excise tax on union health care benefits. The administration does NOT want to raise income taxes on the wealthiest 1% in the nation to pay for the health care giveaway to the insurance companies, instead it wants to fund the giveaway on the backs of middle and working class Americans with union health care benefit plans.

We should be outraged by this betrayal from President Obama - this is the kind of attack we should expect from Republicans, not self-proclaimed "progressive Democrats."

The House bill does not have the excise tax proposal in it. The House and Senate bills still have to be worked in committee before the final bill is written. There is still time to kill this proposal.

Call your senator, call your congressman, call President Obama in the White House and explain to them that if they raise taxes on union members with health care plans, you will NOT vote for them for re-election and will work to make sure that many other working and middle class Americans do NOT vote for them as well.

Obama is a sell-out and shill for corporate America. He has bailed out Wall Street for the past year with trillions of tax dollars, the Senate, with his approval, has given the health insurance companies their bailout this week with this horrible health care proposal, and next year, the education privatization companies will get theirs when NCLB re-authorization gets done.

And it is middle and working class Americans who are bearing the brunt of this president's bailout policies.

Teachers especially are under assault from this president. Not only does he not think you are deserving of respect or deserving of tenure, he thinks you do not deserve your health care benefits either, not without paying a tax on them to fund his health insurance company bailout plan.

So call your senators, call your congressman, call the White House and let them know you're staying home in 2010 and 2012 if this thing passes with the excise tax on union health care plans in it.

Stop the sell-out.