'Cadillac tax' on health plans would hit union and nonunion jobs equally

[alp227]

Source: Alec MacGillis, The Washington Post

It happens often in Washington: A perception emerges and soon hardens into fact. Take the proposed tax on high-cost insurance plans in the Senate's health-care legislation. Because organized labor took the lead in opposing the tax, the assumption took hold that it would hit unions the hardest.

Both sides made use of this perception. Opponents of the tax could argue that it would hurt a lot of hardworking factory workers or teachers who had traded wage gains in return for good health benefits. Proponents of the tax portrayed opposition to it largely as a special-interest issue driven by self-protective unions.

But according to a new analysis, the conventional wisdom about the tax is wrong: The tax would actually fall equally on nonunion plans. At least 80 percent of the workers whose plans would be subject to the tax in 2019 would be in nonunion jobs, according to the analysis by Ken Jacobs of the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center and William H. Dow, a professor of health economics at Berkeley who was a member of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

This impact is roughly in line with the overall breakdown of nonunion vs. union workers with employer-provided plans. And it would be true under both the version of the tax passed by the Senate and a more labor-friendly one the White House agreed to last month.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/21/AR2010022103060.html?wprss=rss_politics

[PSPS]

1. "A perception emerges and soon hardens into fact."

Source: Alec MacGillis, The Washington Post

It happens often in Washington: A perception emerges and soon hardens into fact...

Gee, I wonder why that is? I guess irony has the premiere suite at the Post.

Never mind that the editors apparently didn't realize that this piece describes how this "fact" isn't a fact at all.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. I guarantee it's going to hit me.

And I am by no means making top dollar. This will be another justification to yet again attempt to outsource all the jobs in my position. Quality didn't allow for it last round, but shift the cost equation a bit...

Hope I don't end up in the unemployment line.

[flyarm]

3. Many of us here at DU warned about it..and were basically told to stfu by a certain group

of posters here..we warned it would not only be Union workers ..but it would effect many of middle class workers!

[Mithreal]

4. Joe Biden discusses the McCain/Palin/OBAMA Healthcare Tax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px5YXs788uM