The news on the secret House-Senate health care bill conference is destined to alarm tax payers, in time, if not at once. Far from becoming more palatable once it is adopted, Obamacare is bound to rankle the more its details become clear.
The provision in the bill that taxes high-cost private health insurance plans is bad enough, at 40 percent. It not only is a tax, but a huge one. People effectively are being forced to pay for health insurance as if it was a shameful luxury item. But making things much more irritating is the latest decision by the Conference Committee to exempt union members from the tax. A large share of those union members are public employees, so the principle could not be clearer: you poor private sector taxpayers should subsidize the insurance of you "public servants" who have the same kind of plan as yours. This isn't class warfare, it's political warfare, another example of government by the government, of the government and for the government.
(Of course, not all union members and not all government employees are going to be favorably impressed by the latest concession to their leadership.)
Then there is the looming extension of the Medicare tax to capital gains, another first. What this does is hit a few high earners, but also the nation's huge constituency of senior citizens and others who depend on stocks and bonds to provide their livelihood. Seniors already are antagonized by this health bill--and the process--that brought it about. How will they react when they find out that they are going to pay again for Medicare? Some may remember a candidate's pledge that no one making under $250,000 would have his taxes raised.
Others will recall with irony how this bill was advertised as a "reform".
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