Legal Commentary

Obama "Flexible" On Excise Tax

By Big Tent Democrat

NYTimes:

President Obama told union leaders at a private White House meeting on Monday that he remained committed to taxing high-cost insurance policies as a way to drive down health costs. But he also signaled that he was willing to amend the proposal to “make this work for working families,” a senior administration official said.

We'll see. The strange thing to me is this - if you think it is good policy - as most defenders of it have argued, wouldn't the President's "flexibility" upset you? The other thing I still do not get is how they plan to improve "affordability" (see my previous post) (which means increasing the subsidies to purchase private insurance) without finding a different revenue source. "Fixing" the excise tax is projected to cost 50 billion dollars. How much extra money will be spent to "improve affordability?" If the "deficit hawks" were REALLY deficit hawks, they would embrace the House funding mechanism - raising taxes on the wealthy - those who earn more than $500,000 a year.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).