Fortune magazine senior editor: Excise tax on 'Cadillac' health-care plans is a bad idea

[Bluebear]

The idea of an excise tax on "Cadillac" health-care plans sounds like magic. It would raise almost $150 billion over 10 years to help finance health-care "reform"; it would be paid by employers, insurance companies and "the rich"; it would help "bend the cost curve" in the future; and for all I know, it might help regrow hair and cure warts.

But if you look at the actual workings of the plan, you come away far less impressed.

You discover that more than 80 percent of the money it raises would come from individuals paying higher income, Social Security and Medicare taxes -- not from soulless employers and insurers. You also discover that the biggest portion of the money comes from people who make less than $200,000. That's not exactly rich -- especially not for those of us in high-cost areas on the East and West coasts.

I'm not getting this information from some secret source passing me documents in a parking garage -- it's from an analysis last month by the staff of Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation for Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.). Courtney opposes the tax, but that doesn't affect the numbers because the committee's staff is a well-respected, nonpartisan operation...

As an aside, I think (but can't definitively say) that some of the extra taxes would come from employers cutting back or eliminating health-care flexible spending accounts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/11/AR2010011103591.html?hpid=topnews

[Hello_Kitty]

1. But DUers told me yesterday that the JCT never said that.

Yet here, once again, someone is saying the JCT says that 80% of the revenue will come from increased wages.

[Bluebear]

3. yeppers

[laughingliberal]

2. +++1000 nt