Anti-Worker Health Insurance Tax Remains In President Obama's "reform" Proposal

[Better Believe It]

Union workers will have seven years to downgrade and weaken their health insurance benefits.

That's what workers covered by "generous" health care benefits will have to do in order to have health insurance premiums fall under the health tax requirements.

Some will try, with a straight face, to claim this is a great victory for unions because now ALL workers that have decent health plans will have to downsize, not just union workers! Share the pain!

So what will happen to the unorganized workers who don't have a labor contract with their employers?

Tens of millions of non-union workers will simply have their health benefits radically downgraded or outright terminated by employers unilaterally. That will enable employers to escape the health insurance tax. They don't want to pay it. They won't pay it.

Here's what the International Association of Machinists union had to say on the health insurance policy excise tax.


Press Releases
Machinists Remain Opposed to Health Care Excise Tax
January 15, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, D.C., January 14, 2010 – Despite the so-called agreement announced today by various labor organizations, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) reiterated its opposition to any health care reform legislation that is funded by taxing the value of workers’ existing health care benefits.

“The IAM opposes the excise tax, period. We believe it is unfair to our current members and particularly unfair to those members we hope to organize in the future,” said IAM President Tom Buffenbarger. “If a temporary exemption is the best this Congress can offer the American people after the promises of the last election, they will have earned the wrath of voters in the next election."

“By stringing this 'fix' out until 2018, our members will be pressured to agree to benefit cuts year after year in the vain hope they will be able avoid the excise tax. Companies will seek to shift costs while still cutting benefits to avoid eight years of health care premiums accelerating at fifteen to twenty percent per year.

“This is a huge ping pong ball that our elected leaders are trying to shove down the throats of hard-working Americans,” said Buffenbarger. “On the installment plan or all at once, a 40 percent excise tax on their health care benefits is hard to swallow. But the White House and the House and Senate Democratic leadership appear determined to play ping pong with this legislation until they get the votes they need.

“We will continue our opposition to this egregiously unfair tax.”

The IAM is among the largest industrial trade unions in North America, representing nearly 700,000 active and retired members in dozens of industries.

http://www.goiam.org/index.php/news/press-releases/6708...

[ProSense]

1. Tom Buffenbarger?

Buffenbarger called Obama a “thespian,” and he sarcastically referred to the junior senator from Illinois as a “wunderkind.” He compared Obama to “Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times.” And he pleaded with the crowd to boo Obama’s labor record.

Early in his speech, Buffenbarger asked, “So now we have a decision to make. Will we rely on the Harvard Law Review editor? The silver-tongued orator from Kansas, Hawaii and Illinois? The man in love with the microphone?”

Taking off the gloves, he said, “Barack Obama is no Muhammad Ali. He took a walk every time there was a tough vote in the Illinois State Senate. He took a walk more than a 130 times. That's what a shadow boxer does. All the right moves. All the right combinations. All the right footwork. But he never steps into the ring.”

link

Questions?

[ananda]

2. But not Public Option.

How backwards is that!!!??

[Mithreal]

3. Joe Biden discusses the McCain/Palin/OBAMA Healthcare Tax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px5YXs788uM

[bvar22]

4. This will be of interest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8wmN3wvhNM&feature=player_embedded

Edited to add this link:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x420430

[Bluebear]

5. !

[Better Believe It]

6. "Why isn't the health tax idea dead? Because some Democrats are reluctant to tax high earners."

Will This Study Finally End Democrats' Magical Thinking About the 'Cadillac Tax'?
Richard Eskow
February 18, 2010

It's been a fascinating anthropological exercise to watch the health excise tax concept (the so-called "Cadillac tax") keep its popularity among Democrats and liberals, even as one study after another discredits the assumptions behind it. It's the Democratic equivalent of trickle-down economics - an idea that doesn't seem to die no matter how much it's contradicted by the facts.

The Senate health reform bill places a 40% tax on all employer health benefit costs above a certain threshold. This tax came with a set of assumptions which have been disproved one by one. We were told that the tax would target health plans with especially 'rich' or 'generous' benefits, for example, but a comprehensive analysis showed that wasn't the case. We were told that employers would cut benefits as a result of the tax and give the money saved back to employees as wages, but surveys showed that they plan to do no such thing.

Then we learned that the tax would disproportionately affect plans with lots of older people, or more women, or people who live in higher-cost parts of the country. Who could support an unfair-sounding idea like that? Barack Obama, for one. After months of silence as the Senate eviscerated one of his campaign promises after another, he finally spoke up - in favor of the tax which he had lambasted during the election.

A lot of bloggers and commentators continue to agree with him, too, as do his top economic advisors. Why? In part, it's because they oppose the idea of using employers to provide health care coverage. I do, too - but I don't think you fix that problem by reducing people's current coverage, especially in such a discriminatory way. After all, there's no other option available for these employees. It's like trying to solve the problems of public housing by throwing people out into the street.

Oh ... and one more thing about the tax: The public hates it. Yet despite all that, if a health reform bill passes this year Democrats are expected to keep the Cadillac tax in it.

Why isn't this idea dead? Why doesn't somebody put it out of our misery? There are four reasons: The first nobody thinks the Senate can be talked out of it. The second is that it's one of the few remaining measures in the bill that even looks like cost containment, even though it isn't, and Dems want to be able to say they're cutting costs. The third is that the House's alternative is to tax high earners, and for whatever reason some Democrats are reluctant to do that.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/will-this-study-finally-e_b_468260.html

[Mithreal]

7. You betcha.