AP sources: Obama OKs taxing high-end health plans

[SoftLion]

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jan 6, 6:52 pm ET


WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.
In a meeting at the White House, Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor, Democratic aides said. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.
House Democrats want to raise income taxes on high-income individuals instead and are reluctant to abandon that approach, while recognizing that they will have to bend on that and other issues so that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can maintain his fragile 60-vote majority support for the bill.
Pelosi and four committee chairmen met with the president Wednesday as they scrambled to resolve differences between sweeping bills passed by the House and Senate. The aim is to finalize legislation revamping the nation's health care system in time for Obama's State of the Union address early last month.
Despite the dispute over the payment approach, Pelosi, D-Calif., emerged from the meeting expressing optimism.
"We've had a very intense couple of days," Pelosi said. "After our leadership meeting this morning, our staff engaged with the Senate and the administration staff to review the legislation, suggest legislative language. I think we're very close to reconciliation."
Congressional staff members stayed at the White House into the evening to continue work and a conference call of the full House Democratic caucus was scheduled for Thursday.


Source (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100106/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul)

[Alpheus]

End result: people stop buying high-end health plans... what is 10% of nothing?

[SoftLion]

End result: people stop buying high-end health plans... what is 10% of nothing?

So you think the bourgeois will start buying ****ty health care?

[HK in AK]

This is going to cast a wide net and a lot of people, including myself, will be roped up in this. It is a sad day. I look at it as another promise broken. It is funny that candidate Obama ridiculed McCain for his open discussion about taxing health care plans.

[MaNiC]

I wish America was a bit more like Germany in this regard:

Rich Germans demand higher taxes (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8321967.stm)

*Runs and hides*

[Alpheus]

So you think the bourgeois will start buying ****ty health care?

No, but they will be buying more modest ones. It's common sense, when the gov't taxes goods or services, less people will buy said goods or services.

[budgie]

Nothing wrong with taxes if they're spent on thje right thing but this 'Obamacare' business seems to be messier and messier? They're taxing high end halthcare plans to pay for low-end ones now? What a clusterf*ck.

The government could reduce spending in other areas: the military, bureaucracy, pork, bailouts and pay for a public plan to compete with private insurance. Trying to regulate that industry seems to be the wrong way to challenge them. Want them to lower premiums? Have a national competitor force them to rethink. So simple apparently Congress couldn't manage.

[SilentType]

He must feel fairly confident in the continued support of the UAW and other labor unions where these traditional high-end health benefits are provided.

The drone like march by the Democrats to pass a health care bill that no longer even represents what they wanted seems a bit pigheaded and foolish. Although I haven't sat down and read both the House and Senate bill (who has that kind of time to go through thousands of tedious pages that makes Article 9 of the UCC look like Shakespeare?). They also appear to be grossly over-complicating this legislation. I'm not sure exactly how long it is going to take to actually have people trained in the administration of it? I think it's safe to say that at least at first things are not going to run very smoothly or efficiently, which is going to create enormous political problems for President Obama's 2012 campaign.

If the Democrats feel that they can just correct issues with it as they go they're going to be in for a shocker, because they may just not be the ones in power anymore with the ability to correct them.

I'm a conservative. As a conservative I feel it is not wise to have such a massive and sweeping change all at once to a large sector of our economy with such a short period of time used to plan it. Just doesn't seem wise to me.

It probably would have been better to do things incrementally for the Democrats carefully planning each incremental change toward their goal. Instead they decided to go in the other direction and do this sledge hammer approach. I think it's going to cost them dearly in November.

The American people frankly have NO CLUE what is going to happen or what to expect exactly out of this bill. That's a SERIOUS problem. Who is required to buy their own health insurance and who is going to be given waivers? What happens if I don't want to pay for health insurance? Will employers be required to provide for health insurance to each employee? What if an employer can't afford to provide health insurance to each employee? If there is no public option what do the very poor do will they receive subsidies and if so how is that funded? If you don't get the younger people to buy health insurance then how can you lower the costs for the elderly?

Who knows? Maybe like a few people in Washington? This whole process should be scrapped and they should literally start over.