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Ed Shultz Is Wrong On “Cadillac Tax”
Ed Shultz was just on MSNBC discussing the health care package with a GOP congressman who has issues with the so called Cadillac tax and the fact that while most people with high end plans will face the tax, union members will not.
Ed said that the issue was that union members negotiated the plans as part of their contract as so it should be exempt and that anyone who got the high end plan some other way should be taxed.
Now I am sure in Ed’s mind, anyone who did not get a high end plan through a union contract is some sort of C. Montgomery Burns living in their mansion on the hill.
But what about employers who provide good coverage to employees even absent a union ? (Yes Ed there are nice employers out there).
What about a self employed person who pays for his or her own coverage and wants a good plan for their family ?
What about someone who gets only a basic plan from their employer so they scrimp and save to pay for a nicer plan for their family ?
In the latter two cases the person is both paying for the plan out of their own pocket and being punished for doing that.
Sorry Ed but that is just not fair.
16 Responses to “Ed Shultz Is Wrong On “Cadillac Tax””
This post would be much better if there were links in support of almost any assertion being made.
Well I can't provide a link to something that just happened on MSNBC but Ed did say he felt the tax should not apply to union contracts. Other than getting Ed to log in here and confirm I'm not sure how I can provide a link to something more or less live.
Are you saying you don't believe there is such a thing as the Cadillac tax ??
As to the examples, are you saying you don't think there are nice employers, or people who would work to pay for their own insurance ??
Big Eddie is just taking the side of the unions.
Funny, though, they say they gave up wage increases for better care, their wage expectations were very unrealistic, to say the least. (Does anybody have much sympathy for the strikers at British Airways now?)
More: When it comes to the tax on “Cadillac” plans, the lefties never admit the truth, that this is blatant hypocrisy, as lefties have been the loudest in their demands for generous, even lavish minimum benefit packages that states should require from insurers, and that should be part of “single-payer” health care.
Thanks for the link.
From it I see that the proposed exemption is temporary.
It is temporary for now, but do you really think that the unions won't push for an extension ?
And you didn't answer my other question.
Do you think it would be fair for one family who gets their insurance through a union job to be exempted until 2018 while another family who gets the same plan through a non union job has to pay ?
I'm waiting for all kinds of fun to start, as I said yesterday.
* Employers can dump their health plans now
* The states are going to be suing the feds or otherwise squawking or complaining (mandates, Medicaid…)
* What about the rate increases in the individual markets and in the states' high risk pools?
etc.
Patrick–
To tell you the truth, I don't know much about this issue.
From what I got out of your link and the other link it provided, the union guy has no opportunity to select a lower-priced plan that would go untaxed. This is because the terms of the contract apply to all members of a given local. The unions would like to go back and renegotiate a “non-Cadillac option” for its members. Meanwhile–again, I'm no expert–the non-union guy presumably has the option to switch plans of his own accord if he doesn't want to pay the tax. (Maybe he also needs to be sure has hasn't acquired what would now be a pre-existing condition?)
Maybe once you look into the details it's not that unfair? I confess, I'm not outraged.
You have to love the left of the Democratic Party. They make no effort to hide their belief that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” They send their children to private schools while calling middle class whites racist. They live in all white gated communities while calling the middle class racist rednecks. And they always except themselves from laws and regulations that they say are needed.
You really have to enjoy the coming one party state. The politicians can stop pretending they care about everyone and be blatant about their hatred of the middle class.
Patrick, uh, “fair”? Is it “fair?” As someone who has subsidized the coverage for everyone in a union, everyone with an employer-provided plan, all of the 40% of the population on government health care, let me break it to you. It's never been fair. The only “fair” way to do it is what every other nation does. Everyone pays, everyone benefits.
You're right that Ed is wrong. But the GOP is wronger, in wanting to perpetuate and expand the unfairness.
“Everyone pays, everyone benefits.”
That is what is sought in the current legislation. While militant lefties fail to see this in their rage, this lays down the model for conversion to taxation and government health care eventually. Full participation and payment is the key.
To take a break from the health care hype, abortion obscession, all the other nuttiness:
“You really have to enjoy the coming one party state.”
I still say the GOP or some other party will survive as the party of the more-oppressed-than-ever taxpayers of the future, if nothing else. Of course, what the Dems or future libs will seek is what they want from the GOP now, “moderation,” a comic-book token “opposition” that never questions concentration of power in Washington and all the rest of the “acceptable conservative” criteria. All that's missing is the GOP singing and dancing in blueface.
Davis Axelrod has already figured out how to deal with the problem. Pack as much taxes onto as small a group of the economy (about the top 40% of earners) while spreading the money to as many groups as possible. Look at Chicago to see how a high tax, big spending government can function as a one party state.
Once gain, the real question for the future is can a country where most of the population are poor blacks and Hispanics along with a huge number of government employees generate the economic output required to fund the coming welfare state. If other countries are any example, the U.S. cannot maintain the welfare by either borrowing from other countries (Argentina anyone) or by increasing taxes on a shrinking economic base.
If the future of politics is picking over the bones of a dying American, one party is more than enough to do it (See Detroit).
Hahahahahaha. Yes. Those clever Dems, “pandering” to the majority again. Shocking and shameless. Buying votes by doing things that benefit a majority of Americans. Have they no shame???
The problem is that the U.S. does not have the economy and will definitely not have the economy in the future to generate the wealth needed for all of that pandering. The majority of Americans are willing to take from other to give themselves benefits. Real leadership says no to such demands. The current crop has neither the leadership ability nor the desire to really lead.
The real shame is that most American are willing to trade short term benefits for bigger problems down the road. It started with the WWII generation and has continued ever since.
Some interesting discussion here.
Too bad Ed doesn't read TMV (or maybe he does LOL)
Howdy, SD,
“[T]he real question for the future is can a country where most of the population are poor blacks and Hispanics along with a huge number of government employees generate the economic output required to fund the coming welfare state.”
I suspect the picture is more complicated than that, because our federal finances and the future demographics will make the entire nation face what California has been refusing to face for the past several years but (as our closest thing to Greece, the first EU country to fail due to similar kinds of problems) may have to eventually. And the entire USA will have to face the problems as well — of population aging as well as a coming Era of Limits to Growth of government, setting priorities, and ending some things rather than constantly offering More, More, More.
http://www.twq.com/02spring/hewitt.pdf
Consider the fools who are stuck in the 1960s and expect an ever-earlier retirement on government retirement (welfare) benefits, stuck in the dinosaur era with a union mentality that actually never left the 1930s. They would like to see retirement in the early fifties or early forties, ideally, whereas in reality, “able-bodied” extends into the seventies, the modern definition of “too old to work.” It's now in the seventies, not in the late fifties, early sixties, or earlier, as in the minds of the delusional.
A vision of the entire USA as the equivalent of liberalism's zenith, New York City prior to its self-made bankruptcy (from liberal politics and policies), is stuck in the 1960s and is hopelessly delusional.
Not only is it unrealistic and unreal, the opposite is what's coming to this country by the 2020s.