Thursday, December 10, 2009
Cadillac plans
We have previously blogged about union members with first-rate health care plans that would be considered "Cadillac plans," and therefore subject to new taxes under the Democratic bills proposed in the House and Senate. AP reports that this little misunderstanding is about to be cleared up.
Union leaders, among the most passionate backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, pressed Democratic senators Thursday to drop a tax on high-value insurance plans to pay for remaking the nation's system.I don't see anything in the piece about means-testing the Cadillac plan tax (that is, only hitting families over a certain high income threshold), though that might not have any political legs.
Members of several labor unions denounced the proposed tax on so-called "Cadillac plans," arguing it wouldn't just hit CEOs but also middle-class Americans who did without salary increases to negotiate better health benefits.
"I support health care reform but I can't afford this tax," Valerie Castle Stanley, an AT&T call center worker and member of the Communications Workers of America, said at a news conference outside the Capitol. "For families like mine that are on a budget, the results will be devastating."
If Democratic staffers on the Hill who have been drafting the thousands of pages of the pending bills could inadvertently come up with an important section that harmed one of the Party's key constituencies, what other hidden unintended explosives are there in the bills that will blow up on those of us without the political juice to defuse them prior to passage?
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Dec 11, 07:02:00 AM:
I'm rather surprised at this, I thought union health plans had already been exempted by the bill.
By 
Georg Felis, at
Sat Dec 12, 01:50:00 AM:
What possible harm could occur by passing a 4-ream stack of legislation which mutates from day to day and will affect 1/7th of the US economy.
Godzilla, meet Tokyo.
