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The Communications Workers of America are stepping up their battle against the excise tax on high-end insurance plans, favored strongly by the Obama Administration, by releasing a new poll showing strong opposition to the measure.
Voters across all five regions and 2010 frontline Senate states are strongly opposed to taxing high-cost health insurance plans as a way to help fund health insurance reform. Overall, 70% of voters oppose it, while at least 60% of voters in each region are opposed.
Voters are less likely to re-elect their member of Congress by a 41-point margin (63% less likely to 22% more likely) if they support an excise tax.
Across each region, opposition to taxing high-cost insurance plans is even higher among Independents, with 74% of these voters opposed to such a tax.
Voters clearly prefer to fund health insurance reform by raising taxes on the wealthy than by taxing high-cost plans, as they support taxing households making over a million a year (and individuals making over half a million a year), by a 12-point margin (54% to 42%). This was supported by a majority of voters in seven of the ten states surveyed, and by 49% in the remaining three.
A plurality of voters (49%) would be more likely to re-elect a member of Congress who supports raising taxes on the wealthy to help fund health insurance reform.
Obviously, calling it “taxing health care benefits” matters over calling it “the excise tax on high-end insurance plans,” but it’s not surprising that such a tax would be unpopular (FYI, the exact wording in the poll was “Would you favor or oppose placing a tax on high-cost health insurance plans as a way to help pay for health insurance reform,” which is pretty neutral). Obama the candidate campaigned against it, effectively, in 2008, when John McCain proposed eliminating the employer deduction entirely. They haven’t offered much public education to explain why they support it as a cost-containment measure. And organized labor, the most vocal supporters of reform, is strongly against it.
Crucially, the demographics of the poll are health care reform supporters. In the poll, 52% of those surveyed think the health care system “needs major reforms” or a “total overhaul,” and just 10% think it’s fine the way it is.
The CWA poll is just part of a stepped-up effort to block the excise tax. They’ve taken out ads in DC newspapers and will hold a rally on Capitol Hill today.
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Your comments are exactly right. The executives whom this tax nominally targets will be made whole by their employers or the small businesses they own. They won’t pay a price, because they value the benefit of full coverage. Congresscritters do too, hence, the full dollar, full coverage they provide themselves for a whopping $500/year, less than the monthly cost of basic coverage.
Unions and non-union employees and managers in unionized companies will pay the price. Companies won’t top up their compensation to pay this tax. They will use it, in fact, to shift even more health care costs to their employees and off their books.
This tax is designed to accelerate that process, and to depress the expectation of what “full” health insurance entails. That will lower the cost of government subsidies, make it easier to imply that weak plans are offering more benefits than they do, and bolster insurance company profits.
This proposed tax does not share costs or require that those who benefit without risk put some skin in the game. It is rightwing political theater in the costume of fiscal responsibility.
I expected them to ignore/screw us at every turn – but producing a bill with a tax on benefits, a trigger, and lacking a PO is a serious diss to this major constituency
I know there’s been talk that the obvious plan was for Trumka et al to accept this in exchange for EFCA down the road, or possibly revert to the House plan for taxing the rich in Conference – and eating the No PO and a trigger in the process – from the cheap seats, I just don’t see either happening
considering it is all being helmed by the guy who brought us NAFTA, I’m personally curious as to whether Labor sees it the way I do – a sustained slap or is it simply considered part and parcel of the usual rough and tumble negotiations on a major piece of legislation