The Real Obama: Sticking it to the Working Stiffs

David Lindorff –

If you want to see the unvarnished, true nature of our latest president, you need look no farther than two issues: whether to tax health plans that are deemed “too generous” and whether or how to tax the banks that brought about the financial crisis.

In the case of the health insurance tax, President Obama, after opposing the idea as a candidate when it was proposed by Republican candidate John McCain, is endorsing the Senate bill’s approach, which would levy a 40% tax on all insurance plans that cost more than $8500 for an individual or $23,000 for a family. According to the union movement such a tax would hit one in four union members, who over years of struggle have negotiated decent medical benefits, often foregoing pay increases in order to provide members with health coverage. It would also hit employers with older workforces, smaller employers, who have to pay more for insurance, and also employers in parts of the country where the overall payscales and cost of living are higher, such as the Northeast and the West Coast.

Obama says he thinks that taxing such plans (which are hardly “Cadillac” in today’s health marketplace), would help restrain health inflation. More important, he and the Senate backers of the measure, like that it is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to bring in $149 billion in revenue over 10 years. (Note that we’re talking about just $14.9 billion per year–a rather minor sum compared to the total US healthcare bill of $2.5 trillion a year, or the taxpayer’s share of that bill–$1.2 trillion.)

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