I am just disgusted with the tone of debate about HCR

[beachmom]

Now we all know that Kerry proposed the excise tax. For whatever reason people are not giving him a hard time. Kind of weird. Instead, it's all part of a conspiracy theory that Obama has created to make people's health insurance worse. Huh? This diary is highly misleading:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/12/824211/-Its-NOT-a-Cadillac-tax,-its-a-junk-insurance-tax

I read it the first time and was highly confused. The tax is on employer provided insurance not individual bought insurance. Then I learn that Eve is an employer!! But she fails to mention it in the diary. So people will read it and think EVERYONE has to pay this tax, and that insurance is going to stay completely the same as it is now plus 40% excise tax. All other aspects of the bill are ignored. It's just crap. And I get some of the reticense on the excise tax. It makes people nervous. But please. Crap like the above is just terrible.

And here is the kicker. Kerry proposed this tax in JULY for God's sake. It was given serious consideration immediately. It was in the Baucus bill. It was in the Senate bill that passed. But what did we hear from the netroots darlings? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The unions balked from the start. THEY are an effective interest group. But the netroots could ONLY talk about the public option until Lieberman killed it. Then suddenly all kinds of things in the bill was wrong. I'm sorry, but they are just like the right wing. They are inconsistent and have no credibility on this bill. They just flit and float to the next shiny object that is THE.WORST.THING.EVER.

Paul Krugman equated FDL to right wing bloggers yesterday. Um, yup.

[MBS]

1. I just got an email from FDL on this topic

and they are really, truly off the wall. Krugman's analysis is right on. Glad to see that he is showing good sense on the health-care bill. (He sometimes can be pretty negative himself, but he's been consistently balanced on this issue).

[beachmom]

2. The two dailykos diarists who were employed by FDL no longer work there.

Slinkerwink & nyceve have left. I think the Norquist thing bugged them. Still, I don't like their tactics, framings of issues, etc. That hasn't changed about them.

[MH1]

11. I'm glad they left

I feel much like you about all this but I think it's a good sign that they've left FDL.

[karynnj]

3. It is really odd that the far left is not going after Kerry

(but I am happy about that! It might be that they like other things he got into the bill.)

Another thing that to me is very weird is the unions. In the earliest articles in July, one point made was that Kerry had worked with the unions and that they agreed not to oppose this when the family level was $25,000 (I don't remember the individual level.)

They remained silent when Baucus came out with the plan bringing it down to $21,000 and Kerry and Stabanow brought the issue up several times in the Finance committee. The Reid bill split the difference and it is at $23,000. Now, both the unions are out in force with statements that are far more blustery against the entire concept than one would expect given that Pelosi and others are arguing for raising that threshold.

The only thing I can think is that some union leaders don't understand this. The study that they are pushing, which Deaniac83 ably debunked, is pathetic. There is no way a competent economist/statistician etc could have made the errors made there innocently. (ie computing the ratio cost per employee for insurance to income including the income of people with insurance.) Now, I find it hard to assume so many well positioned people are incompetent, but the alternative is that they are intentionally distorting things.

The question is then - why? Now, the benefits of the top union officials likely are not those of rank and file - and unions can be pretty corrupt - just as businesses can be. But, that seems unlikely because so many are putting this out. So, the most likely conclusion might be that in a very hard environment when unions will not win significant pay increases, they want something that shows there value and they want some more attention and respect from the Democratic party. Here, it may be that what they might be satisfied with is the thresholds being restored. Here Pelosi is speaking $28,000 - now that puts $25,000 pretty neatly slightly below the middle - then the dollars could be restored adding a smaller increase in taxes at the top.) This will allow the unions to claim that they "saved" their union benefits.

[beachmom]

4. Can you verify if that economic study was partially funded by the unions?

I mean, everyone went after Gruber for doing work for HHS and then I read someone say the study pushed by Slinkerwink was funded by the unions in part. I never verified one or the other.

I think the unions are gaming it that the House bill version is closer to the final bill. BUT, again, we need 60 votes in the Senate. That is actually for me the point of it all. I think some compromises can be done, but the Senate is closer to what it will be than the House.

[karynnj]

6. Wisteria's link to FDL says it is from "labor groups"

"But last night Gruber appeared on The News Hour, and here’s how Gwen Ifil introduced him:

“For more on the pros and the cons of the so-called Cadillac tax, we turn to Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — he is also a paid consultant to the Obama administration — and Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that receives some money from labor groups.”

Here is their board of directors - http://www.epi.org/pages/board/ (very labor heavy)


I agree with you - the Senate where we need 60 out of 60 votes is the key test. Of course the House bill will please more Democrats, they only need 50%.

[sandnsea]

7. Many unions supported Bush

If 40% of their membership will say anything to attack Democrats are added to the number who buy into the FDL mentality, then the unions have a problem. In addition, someone pointed out to me yesterday that some unions are administering policies themselves and may find they are subject to the tax. So it's possible that enough has changed since July that they have went back on the deal.

And I'm not surprised the left isn't attacking Kerry anymore. This has mostly been about ripping Obama apart because he isn't Dennis Kucinich, facts be damned.

[wisteria]

5. They are no different than wingers. I am tired of their antics too.

And, now they are going after MIT economist Jon Gruber who the administration paid to do research on the numbers on this proposal. And, just because people like JK are quoting this man, FDL is now saying his is a paid operative of the administration.
I will tell you, if Dean continues to be associated with types like those on FDL he is going to have no credibility left whatsoever.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/12/jonathan-gruber-paid-consultant-to-the-obama-administration/

[beachmom]

8. I watched the PBS News Hour last night, and you could tell that Gruber

was frustrated about the low level of discussion:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/cadillac_01-11.html



GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask you this, Jonathan Gruber, since you have consulted with the administration on this. A lot of House Democrats think that this is a deal-breaker. What do you do about that?

JONATHAN GRUBER: Well, I think, partly it's about education. Partly, it's about getting reasonable conversations, like the ones we're having here, instead of sort of polemic conversations, which don't really make the points clear.

I think the other is about compromising. I think the Senate has moved some way -- some of the direction of the House with their Medicare tax, additional Medicare tax on the highest income earners. I think it's about a compromise where you recognize the cost savings potentials of this, recognize the priority of the president, but at the same time move towards the House by having more progressive revenue raising in other contexts, like a Medicare tax on the high earners or a tax -- or some small millionaire's tax.

GWEN IFILL: What about that, Josh Bivens?

JOSH BIVENS: I think some sort of compromise could be useful here.

GWEN IFILL: Like what?

JOSH BIVENS: Well, I mean, one, have the Senate bill move a little bit toward the House on progressivity.

I highly recommend watching the video at the link. The amount of daylight between the two views was a lot smaller than what the far left bloggers have been saying. They agreed a lot.

[wisteria]

9. Thanks. n/t

[karynnj]

10. There are some wonderful comments that are in the same vein as yours

on this blog that is discussing the latest MA Rassmussen poll. There are many good comments that started as someone was concerned that some liberal/progressives could be "sitting this out" because they think it would be good if the bill failed. (This is as smart as liberals who sat out 1968.)

here is one comment:

Health care is one of those issues that you can argue in circles and end up right back where you started, because every idea, every component piece in a big bill, has its downsides and arguments against it, but then if you take it away you leave a big problem unsolved.

Complicating things further is that we're a big fucking country spanning many thousands of miles and housing 300 million people. No country with a population approaching ours has any kind of comprehensive government-managed/regulated health care program.

So ultimately here we are, having worked out something that actually got SIXTY Senators to vote for it, which is amazing, and some on the angry left want to kill it with a delusion that we'll get something "better" as a result.

Lose this bill and we're dead in November. Period. But there are too many "activists" who don't know jack about politics.

http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/6188/masen-coakley-lead-down-to-2-in-rasmussen

The Coakley numbers are getting scary, but the point is that she still is ahead in all but one and the polls already include estimates of greater enthusiasm for the Republicans. One thing about that - those models are complex and have to be based on similar past elections. There really has not been a similar past election in MA. People's motivation to vote can be they are enthusiastic about a candidate or just that they want to keep the seat blue. Not to mention the Democrats have a more organized GOTV.

[beachmom]

12. I assume you guys saw that there was a compromise

Basically, they raised the threshold to $24K (which is a good change) and then gave the unions a temporary exemption (very, very bad idea). I am not in a union. No one in my family is in a union. In fact, apart from teachers, no one I know is in a union. They are a minority of the work force (about 10%, right?). They need to renegotiate their contracts and bloody be subject to the excise tax like the rest of us have to. The more I think about it, the worse I feel about it. This is the first time where I have not been able to adjust to changes in HCR. This is a special interest getting special treatment. Now I defend unions to the extreme anti-union talk where I live (which happens all the time). I think unions are good for workers. But for them to get special treatment here is similar to certain large corporations getting a tax break when everyone else has to pay. It is unfair.

Kevin Drum thinks my reaction (and similar ones) is out of whack:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/01/selling-out-unions

This compromise doesn't give unions anything. All it does is slightly moderate a basically anti-union tax. If Democrats were really cutting backroom deals with union bosses, they never would have proposed the excise tax in the first place. Or they would have exempted union contracts completely. There are plenty of other ways to fund healthcare reform, after all. But we've gotten to a point in the United States where anti-union sentiment is so widespread that (a) proposing a tax that falls largely on unions, and then (b) reducing it a bit, is considered a grubby giveaway even by some lefties. Yeesh.

And I say that as a supporter of the excise tax, which I think is good policy even if it does harm union interests a bit.1 But whatever else you can say about it, it does harm union interests, and the new version continues to harm union interests. It just harms them a little less. I sure wish we could cut a few "backroom" deals like that when it comes to giveaways for the rich and powerful.

I guess my view is that unions can always reconfigure their wages & benefits. It may be "anti-union" at the moment, but only with their contracts as is. If they change their contracts then I don't see how the excise tax is anti-union.

[karynnj]

13. I agree with you

I really don't like the way they are treated differently. I like some of the other changes - the ability for the unions to get "exchange" plans in 2017, the agreement to handle high cost areas differently and the raise in the limit (that really goes up by as much as $3000 because they exclude costs for dental and vision.

Now, I suspect that with those changes, the unions would not even end up being caught by this in the years until 2018 - if the plan works as it should. My guess is that this was the unions' pound of flesh they wanted to end their opposition. They can carry that as a bloody flag to their people - a victory in a time where negotiating will be tough. (If they give new numbers of the money likely raised by this, it will be very easy to see how much the changes change the finacial numbers - remembering that it also cuts the tax due from non-union plans.)

I totally disagree with Kevin Drum, there were few unions affected at all with the plan in the early years. The fact is the tax at the $23,000 level was said to affect only about 3% of the people in the country. At $24,000, it may affect less. The unions had agreed grudgingly to go with $25,000. I think he is incoherent when he says that he is a supporter and that it falls mostly on the unions, while decrying it as "anti union". The tax was not inherently anti-union. In fact, it looks like Kerry worked to put the line above their plans - even though that put the line at nearly 2 times the average plan. Another way to look at it, is that people with these plans have (between them and their employer) benefited for decades by an incredibly beneficial tax break.

It would seem that in contracts already negotiated, the employer will have to eat the cost if the unions already specified the package. In future years, they can do as you say - negotiate more salary. They actually are in a better position to do so than individuals.