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'CADILLAC HEALTH CARE BENEFIT' CAN BE MISLEADING DESCRIPTION
"Cadillac health care benefits" are one of the targets of the pending health insurance bill, but the name does not do them justice.
Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute, March 4, 2009 - There are legitimate questions about how to pay for the costs of reform. One idea, taxing so-called "Cadillac" health care coverage provided by employers, has been gaining some congressional support. . .
The research shows that the burden of the proposal to tax high-priced health coverage will fall heavily on two groups who are least able to bear it: workers in small firms and workers in employer pools with higher risks, such as those with a high percentage of older workers.
First, small businesses are paying high premiums for the insurance they provide to their employees-not because the plans are especially lavish, but because they include too few employees to constitute the broader risk pool that would qualify them for lower costs for the same coverage.
Second, employees whose characteristics cause them to be classified as higher risks make them more expensive to insure. Adding a tax on top of the cost of premiums they and their employers pay will likely drive more of them into the ranks of the uninsured.
Many call these high-priced insurance plans "Cadillac" coverage, but that is a misnomer. The high price may stem not from any bells and whistles in their coverage but from a fundamental inequity in the way that insurance for these groups is currently priced. This policy idea is a blunt instrument that may do harm to the very people we should be striving to help.
Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute, March 4, 2009 - There are legitimate questions about how to pay for the costs of reform. One idea, taxing so-called "Cadillac" health care coverage provided by employers, has been gaining some congressional support. . .
The research shows that the burden of the proposal to tax high-priced health coverage will fall heavily on two groups who are least able to bear it: workers in small firms and workers in employer pools with higher risks, such as those with a high percentage of older workers.
First, small businesses are paying high premiums for the insurance they provide to their employees-not because the plans are especially lavish, but because they include too few employees to constitute the broader risk pool that would qualify them for lower costs for the same coverage.
Second, employees whose characteristics cause them to be classified as higher risks make them more expensive to insure. Adding a tax on top of the cost of premiums they and their employers pay will likely drive more of them into the ranks of the uninsured.
Many call these high-priced insurance plans "Cadillac" coverage, but that is a misnomer. The high price may stem not from any bells and whistles in their coverage but from a fundamental inequity in the way that insurance for these groups is currently priced. This policy idea is a blunt instrument that may do harm to the very people we should be striving to help.
2 Comments:
How about eliminating the waste from DOD, maybe stop building helicopters that fall fom the sky or planes that don't fly, instead of trying to force the decent union employers out of business. free enterprise my ass, Free lunch is more like it. Every goddamn piece of legislation now is about funneling the max amount of taxpayer money to those corrupt bribers who've paid Congress the most.
"Many of the news sites that we link to on a daily basis have been covering this issue. However, these sites are not covering the issue sufficiently. There should be blazing headlines on a daily basis: ECONOMIC COUP IN THE US! TRILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS STOLEN!
Think about all the vital issues you care about and then think about the Trillions of dollars that were stolen. How could a small fraction of that money directly affect the issues you care about most? We need to make this connection, and we need to make the theft of Trillions of dollars THE LEAD ISSUE RIGHT NOW!
Just think about how much can be done with this stolen money. The highest quality universal healthcare could be provided to everyone in the US. Every foreclosed mortgage in the US can be paid off, for that matter, it would take a fraction of the stolen money to provide a free house to every family in the US. Thousands upon thousands of jobs can be created with the stolen money. Young people who are shackled with massive student debt can have their loans paid off and we can have free higher education for everyone, not to mention a drastically improved educational system. Think about the social programs across the board that could be funded to improve our societal functions and standards of living, if we could use the stolen tax money for what it was originally intended for.
This money could be used to help combat the environmental crisis. The bottom line is that people seem to be missing the point that this stolen money could be used to actually solve many of the serious issues we are confronted with. This is not a utopian dream, the resources are available, it could be a reality, if we had the stolen tax money."
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20091120143956796
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