health reform

The $149 billion number - the amount of revenue the CBO estimates the excise tax will bring in - has becoming gospel in Washington. But there's a very good chance the number is overstated, possibly by tens of billions of dollars, and the mistake seems to have been completely overlooked. Here's how it happened: more »

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The battle to resist the excise tax continue, with a front line of resistance forming in the House and Senate. Efforts include the movement to drum up support for the Sanders-Franken-Brown Amendment, which replaces it with a high-earner tax similar to that contained in the House health reform bill. more »

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Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, and Sherrod Brown have introduced a bill in the Senate that would replace the excise tax on higher-cost health plans with a tax on very high-earners. This amendment would put the Senate's proposal in line with the House bill, removing one contentious issue from any future conference to reconcile the House and Senate bills. more »

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Matt Yglesias is right to skewer a truly terrible idea from Sen. Tom Carper. Sen. Carper wants a health tax based on the rate of increase a health plan experiences over time, and Yglesias does a good job pointing out the flaws in this notion. more »

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A recent poll released today provided the first comprehensive look at the political popularity of the excise tax on higher-cost health plans, and the results should raise grave political concerns for the tax's supporters. The poll, which concentrated on battleground electoral states, showed that legislators who voted for the tax could face voters' wrath in 2010. The pollsters found that the excise tax was extremely unpopular, while voters overall favored the idea of taxing high-income earners.

Pollsters John Anzalone and Matt Hogan presented their findings today on a conference call with reporters. "“We’ve never seen numbers like this," said Anzalone. more »

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We're summarized some of our content on DailyKos. Stop on by if you have any comments to add.

As we told the Kossacks:

A lot of folks in Washington like to pretend there are mythical union people out there somewhere savoring the fruits of their lavish health plans, perhaps by enjoying a free massage while Deepak Chopra whispers meditation instructions in their ear. Meanwhile everybody else get only the care they bought fair and square. That's the American way, right? But the fact is that most people in these so-called "Cadillac plans" are in them because they or their fellow employees are sicker than average, or because of other factors they can't change. Taxing them for that is immoral and wrong. It's a way to pay for health reform without taxing the wealthy, as the House has proposed to do, by placing the burden somewhat randomly on middle-class people instead.

That's why the tax has to be stopped.

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"We're finding that about half of the large employers we work with will be at or above the (excise tax threshold) limits." Senior Health Benefits Consultant

We promised yesterday to write a series of posts about the "amazing facts" contained in a recent Kaiser Health News article about the excise tax (aka "middle class health tax.") We suggested yesterday that the larger a health plan, the more likely it is to have plans that would would be "generous" enough to be targeted by the tax. Yesterday we highlighted Mercer's finding that up to 19% of employer health plans would be affected by the tax in 2013, its first year. That contrasts only slightly with the CBO's estimate that 19% of plans would be affected by 2016.

Whether you use 2013 or 2016 as the date, however, there's growing consensus that this tax will quickly affect one out of every five plans. So "Cadillac tax" is a misnomer - unless one car out of every five is a Caddy where you live. Not in my home town, it ain't ...

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The AFL-CIO has sent out an email blast in support of the campaign to overturn the excise tax on health benefits. The letter is addressed to constituents of Rep. Jerrold Nadler, praising him for his work in opposition to the tax and suggesting they encourage him to "stay strong" on the issue.

The letter reads in part:

"Can you believe the Senate is considering taxing our benefits to pay for health care reform?

We need health care reform desperately, but taxing workers’ health benefits is wrong. Fortunately, 185 members of the House are opposed to taxing worker benefits, including your representative, Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

We need to make sure Rep. Nadler stays strong and continues to side with working families."

The email includes links that enable readers to "thank (their) representative" for his stance on this issue.

I suspect there will be more such campaign efforts in the near future, as labor (and perhaps other constituencies affected by this tax) mobilize to build resistance to it.

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Kaiser Health News has summarized some new findings from the Mercer consulting group that are quite compelling. We think they're so significant they should each be absorbed separately. The first impressive finding, from a study of 3,000 firms: "The excise tax ... could hit up to 19 percent of medical packages offered by employers in 2013, the first year it goes into effect." (Emphasis mine)

19 percent! As in one health plan in five - you know, that 19 percent. We don't have enough data to guess what percentage of people with employer health insurance would be affected, but we're predicting it will be more than 19 percent. Why? Because larger employers tend to offer more generous health coverage than smaller employers, and union health plans also tend to have larger memberships. So if one in every five plans will be affected, larger plans will be disproportionately taxed - with the effects of that tax being passed on to more than one American in five with employer-based insurance.

We'll encourage Mercer and others to pursue the data, and we'll ask for some supporting information, but until then we're betting that this underwriting logic is pretty sound.

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The following appeared at Daily Kos and elsewhere as a roundup of today's activities and posts

We need to stop the excise tax on so-called "Cadillac" health plans - a tax that will affect an increasing number of middle-class workers over the next ten years. In the meantime, feel free to take a poll: "Do you think we have too much healthcare in this country?" more »

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