Communication Workers of America Study: Health Care Excise Tax Will Harm Middle Class:

[amborin]

".....Insurance companies and self‐insured employers will dramatically reduce health benefits in
order to get the cost of their health plans below the threshold and avoid the tax – essentially
shifting the pain to working families by providing them with less comprehensive coverage.

Table 1 shows the effect of the SFC excise tax on the most popular plans offered by CWA
employers in 43 states for which we have data. Unless the plans remain below the threshold,
some plans will face taxes for each worker in the plan of up to $58,000 over ten years. The
average taxes over ten years that would be owed for each worker or retiree in the most popular
plan are:

• $19,300 for active worker family coverage
• $7,200 for active worker single coverage
• $8,500 for pre‐Medicare retiree family coverage

Clearly, employers faced with taxes of this magnitude will demand deep health benefits cuts
and cost shifting to workers to avoid paying the tax. “ emphatically do not plan to
absorb more health care costs or share any company savings (if there are any), according to
recent Towers‐Perrin survey of 433 human resource executives.3

2. Excise Taxes on Plans will Result in Benefit Cuts and Wage Increases to Offset Cost Shifting
The JCT and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assume that in response to a 40 percent
excise tax, employers will cut benefits to get the price of their plans below the threshold and
then increase workers’ wages to offset those cuts.

Workers will pay income and payroll taxes
on these new wages, which will result in about $142 billion (70 percent) of the $200 billion
windfall to the government projected in the legislation.4 In effect, workers’ health care benefits
will be taxed as new income. This is precisely the kind of tax on health care benefits proposed
by Sen. John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign for which he was lambasted by
candidate Barack Obama and most other Democratic officials.

3 Towers‐Perrin, “Health Care Reform: Leading Employers Weigh In,” Sept. 2009, p. 1.
4 New York Times, “Congress Split on a Health Tax on Costly Plans,” Oct. 13, 2009, p. 1.

snip

http://files.cwa-union.org/healthcarevoices/CWAExciseTaxReport.pdf

[bvar22]

1. Of course it will.

ALL a part of the Bait & Switch Health Care Scam.
Even Obama KNOWS it will hurt the Working Class:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x420430

He was AGAINST it before he was FOR it.
:(

[flyarm]

2. Americans used to fight for and work for bringing up the standards of our future generations and our

neighbors..now with this..we are crapping all over our standards and shitting down the standards of everyones health care! I pity future generations.

This is the destruction of our standards of living and health care in this nation!

Nothing to be applauded.

[Touchdown]

3. K&R

CWA Member here!

[eridani]

4. If this stays in the bill, we are looking at total poltical disaster

--unless maybe the Dems serve up some populist red meat on some other issue like financial reform.

[Fading Captain]

5. That won't even be close.

The Dems are fucked.

It'll be interesting to see how this place functions when a real liberal third party candidate runs against Obama in 2012.

[eridani]

7. Remember that the general public has really crappy long-term memory

If the Dems can get something done that actually benefits people, all bets are off.

[Xithras]

10. Yes, but this will be hitting "the general public" again and again, every year, forever.

We're not talking about a one time tax here. We're talking about a permanent and ongoing devolution of middle class employer provided healthcare coverage coupled with an excise that that will largely be absorbed by the workers themselves. The public is great at forgetting about one-time political events, but that's not what we're discussing here.

[depakid]

6. Financial reform will make the health care fiasco look like boy scout jamboree

[amborin]

8. kicking; i learned new, bad features of the Senate plan, which Obama advocates n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. Well duh!

:shrug: