Reid's HCR is a major tax increase on the middle class!

[IndianaGreen]

The tax on the so-called "Cadillac plans" target the hard-won union health benefits, which were won often in lieu of increased wages. It will the the Chevy owners that will end up paying this tax.

The tax on our union-won health care benefits will finance the subsidies for folks that can't afford the mandated insurance. These subsidies will in turn end up in the pockets of the health industry.

It is nothing but a shell game in which the only winners are those that own stocks in the health insurance industry and Big Pharma.

Another transfer of wealth from the workers to the corporations. ObamaCare has outdone Reagan's Trickle Down!

[debbierlus]

1. It is disgusting. Truly and completely vile.

[Ildem09]

2. I tried!

I worked on HR3200 in Indianapolis Andre Carson was a good dude, and in New Albany and Jeffersonville on Barron Hill, I really respect that dude he is the only good blue dog. I don't think he realizes he belongs in the CPC

[IndianaGreen]

4. Hey, I love Carson and have canvassed for him before (I miss his mom)

I haven't said anything bad about Hill in years, since he was replaced by that Neanderthal with the trucking business. I rejoiced when he won his seat back. I watched the election returns with Drinking Liberally downtown Indy.

With the exception of Evan Bayh, our Hoosier Democrats are pretty good people.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ildem09]

5. IF!!!

the taxes were going to the government for real public administered care such as Medicare for all im certain no one would have problems with it. however, having the taxes go to the corporations is where the beef it

[Bill219]

6. +5

[IndianaGreen]

7. Perhaps I should have used LieberCare

but it was Obama who sent Rahm to tell Reid to give everything that Lieberman wanted. This is the bill that Obama wanted.

And this is NOT the health reform we voted and hoped for.

[Aramchek]

15. haters comes in all parties, apparently

[BeyondGeography]

8. Vote Republican already

Sheesh.

[IndianaGreen]

9. I voted for Evan Bayh--and he is a DINO

His wife sits on the board of WellPoint.

[BeyondGeography]

11. Well, there, we agree

[lapfog_1]

10. Yes, I've been screaming at the DLCers here on this very thing

over and over.

The mandate is also a regressive tax on the middle (and lower) class because it falls disproportionately on them.

If I make $40,000 a year or $400,000 a year (as an artist, let's say). In both cases I am mandated to buy insurance. A mandate is a fancy word for "tax" (that they will use the IRS to enforce it, should be a big clue). The premium will be the same, let's say $7500 a year (I'm young).

For the "starving artist" that works out to be 18.75 percent tax on my gross. For the young rock star... it's a 1.87 % tax on his gross.

For what is now a government mandated service. The only difference between this tax and other taxes (like our military) is that you are expected to pay the insurance company (the army) directly for their service, instead of having the IRS take it out of your paycheck and then cut checks to the DOD. Otherwise there is no difference.

So, for the rich bastards, 2% tax for health care. For the starving artist, nearly 19% tax.

Hardly seems like a Democratic plan does it. Certainly not progressive.

The only reason people aren't screaming about this is that we are used to buying our own insurance, or rather, we depend on companies buying it for us and so we NEVER SAW that money in the first place. Didn't appear as part of your gross pay. But it was always there.

[Kokonoe]

20. If a married couple both have insurance

Do they get charged double tax. 18.75% + 18.75% = 37.50% ?

It would seem so, since the corporations will get a blank check.

Has this been addressed?

[lapfog_1]

33. Probably not, at least not right away.

Because you wouldn't purchase two individual policies but some sort of family plan for the two of you, probably at a discount. At least until the insurance companies figure out that there is more profit from not offering any family plans at all.

I assume you are talking about only one working spouse.

[Hello_Kitty]

23. I suspect a lot of people here who support the mandate get insurance through work

With their employer picking up a big part of the tab so they have no idea how much it really costs. Their share of the premium is "affordable" to them and they are used to paying it so they can't understand why it would be a hardship for someone who makes "too much" for subsidies to come up with the entire amount of a premium.

[IndianaGreen]

32. Imagine their surprise when their health benefits are taxed as income

It will be too late them for them to post messages in DU in support of this bill.

[doc03]

12. My Union supported Clinton and he gave us NAFTA

my Union supported Obama now we get our hard earned benefits taxed. I have gone on strike 3 times once for 1 day, another time for 100 days and the last time 10 1/2 months for those benefits now I am penalized. Baffles me why the Unions mindlessly support Democrats when they pushed us under the bus 30 years ago. This is why you had the Reagan Democrats and why a good many rank and file vote Republican. You may as well go for the real thing if you have Republican and Republican Lite to chose from.

[IndianaGreen]

13. NAFTA devastated our industrial base

Cities like Kokomo are like a ghost town with all the empty or nearly empty parking lots in what used to be thriving industries.

[doc03]

17. You should see Wheeling WV or any other small town

in the PA OH WV area. The downtown areas look like bombed out Baghdad.

[IndianaGreen]

18. Parts of South Bend look like Beirut during the civil war.

The working class has paid a heavy price on the altar of globalization, and now the same people that sold us a bad bill of goods are poised to tax our health benefits "for the common good" they say, but it is really to feed the for-profit health industry.

[amborin]

14. if it passes, it will haunt dems, and decimate the midd class n/t

[Aramchek]

16. you wish

[jillan]

19. Another campaign promise broken.

[IndianaGreen]

21. When it comes to war, Obama keeps his promises

and then some.

[ClarkUSA]

24. Yeah, he's ending the Iraq war by 2011, as promised.

:)

[ClarkUSA]

22. Spare us the OTT rhetoric. I prefer SEIU's Andy Stern's "Don't Kill the Bill. Fix It."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x71483

[Hello_Kitty]

25. Uh, gee, that seems to be one of the things Stern wants to fix

It's bullshit to tax union medical benefits. That is exactly what the OP says it is. A transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich.

[ClarkUSA]

27. But Andy Stern, unlike the OP, doesn't blame Pres. Obama at all. He blames Congress.

In fact, Andy Stern has praised Pres. Obama's HCR efforts in statements he's made recently.

[Phx_Dem]

26. You should consider accepting one of the jobs the GOP is going to offer you.

With those kind of scare tactics and claims of socialism (transfers of wealth), they're probably probably falling all over themselves trying to get you on board!

:party:

[ClarkUSA]

28. lol! Sure sounds like a headline from Faux News, doesn't it?

I predict a great and potentially lucrative future in fearmongering.

;)

[PBS Poll-435]

29. Sounds more like Whirled Nuts Daily or NewsMix

:shrug:

[ClarkUSA]

30. !!!

:rofl:

[IndianaGreen]

31. If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010

Health Care Kumbaya

by Jeff Crosby, Jul 9, 2009

The peasants are filing their pitchforks to a fine point in anticipation of an attack on the palace—and the target of their ire is not what we might have intended. At this critical moment in the health care debate, more than a few working folk are taking a suspicious look at the health care reform efforts of Senate Democrats, President Obama—and their own unions. A headline in my local newspaper, the Lynn Item, helped stir the tempest: “Obama Open to Taxing Benefits to Fund Reform.”

Vincent Panvani of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) warns:

If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010, and it will be used against Obama….(Y)ou’re taxing the middle class.

Teamsters President James Hoffa calls taxing health care benefits “the poison pill that will kill reform.” The Laborers have attack ads at the ready. And Donna Smith, an organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) notes that insurance companies continue discriminatory rates for older workers and ongoing rescissions of benefits—that is, targeting people with more than 1,400 medical conditions for “opposition research” investigations so their benefits can be cut off. “Ugly stuff,” she puts it. (At a health care forum in Lynn, Mass., last week, Rep. John Tierney reported that in congressional hearings he asked every insurance company if they would stop these viscous targeted rescissions—each one said “No.”)

<snip>

Funding health care reform has always been the fulcrum of the contest. The insurance companies, hospitals and drug companies become advocates of “reform” if and when it simply means a massive transfer of public funds into their hands. The American Hospital Association and American Health Care Plans spokespersons reneged on the promises to reduce costs they had announced at a much-hyped appearance with President Obama and SEIU’s hapless Andy Stern—just three days earlier! (Hey, “voluntary” controls worked with the banks and OSHA, right?)

Profits at the 10 largest public ally traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent between 2000 and 2007. And they intend to keep them climbing.

The “Massachusetts Plan,” which was condemned by the AFL-CIO when it was first passed, fits the “feed-the beast” mold. To say, as the sole union defenders of the Mass Plan in the state suggest, that the “Mass Plan does some good things but it just didn’t deal with costs” is like saying poison ivy is a pretty plant if it wasn’t poison. The Mass Plan is collapsing of its own financial weight. Its cost has doubled in two years to $1.3 billion. Debate here now centers on whether to eliminate dental care or eliminate coverage for certain groups of legal immigrants.

Which brings us back to the gathering peasants. There are three distinct groups of union members girding for revenge if the Republicans and conservative Democrats manage to cow Obama into taxing health care benefits. First are the single-payer advocates, who have argued from Day One that the only way to “reform” is to start by fighting for the best solution, not start from a dense compromise that will inevitably be moved toward the health care millionaires in the interest of “bipartisanship.”

Second are the conservative union members who have told me from the beginning that the inevitable outcome of the union campaign will be the “guv’mint” taxing the working stiff to pay for insurance for poor people. This is a successful formula right-wingers are using to drive a wedge between “working people” and “the poor.” The crisis of legitimacy of the government will worsen, the right-wingers will be the beneficiaries. Rush Limbaugh and the Fox crowd are drooling.

Finally, there is the large middle group that is just starting to pay attention—and they are focused on the Obama Taxing Our Benefits headlines mentioned above. A member of the Local 201 Legislative Committee who is talking one on one with our members, gathering letters to legislators on health care reform, reports the best motivator is: “Tell them not to tax our benefits!”

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/09/health-care-kumbaya/#more-16109