Free Republic

Another year gone. Another year of the Affordable Care Act's opponents moving further from - not closer to - getting their way on health care. How so? This week's omnibus deal, which was approved Friday by the U.S. House and Senate, provided a clear view once again of the uphill climb Republicans face in repealing Obamacare. The omnibus negotiations never included talk of repeal, because that's a non-starter among Democrats and the White House. Instead, Republicans were left to chip away at the health law they hate. They did so by postponing two important Obamacare taxes - the Cadillac tax...

The White House objects to a few Republican provisions in the omnibus $1.1-trillion spending bill, but overall, "We succeeded," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Wednesday. "So we walked into these negotiations focused on making sure that Republicans would not succeed in advancing their ideological agenda through the budgetary process, and I think, based on all of the solid reporting work that you have done over the last several weeks, there were a variety of attempts that Republicans undertook to try to do exactly that, and we did succeed in fighting off those efforts." ...

Economists Lawrence H. Summers, Treasury secretary under President Clinton and top economics adviser under President Obama, and N. Gregory Mankiw, CEA chair under President George W. Bush, team up this morning in an op-ed supporting Obamacare’s Cadillac tax... They are right to do so, as the Cadillac tax actually cuts government spending (properly understood).

After 5 years, two midterm disasters, and a rollout that reminded Americans why they fell out of love with big government in the 1970s, reality has finally begun to dawn on some Democrats about Obamacare. With open enrollment about to start and a third straight round of premium spikes about to hit voters’ pockets, the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate has offered a “major break” with the Obama administration on its signature domestic policy achievement. Hillary Clinton will speak out against the so-called Cadillac tax on high-coverage health care plans, as early as this week, according to The New York Times....

TEAMSTERS OFFICIALS WANT TO MEET WITH DONALD TRUMP! Teamsters officials met behind closed doors today. The union refused to endorse Hillary Clinton for president. The officials told FOX News they want to meet with Donald Trump. James Rosen reported: "Union executives told me they want to sit down with Republican candidates, most notably, front-runner Donald Trump who has collaborated with unionized work forces across his real estate career." Via Special Report: BREAKING: Teamsters Withhold Endorsement for Hillary Want to Meet With Donald Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6tot9T6ims

One out of four U.S. employers may soon face a steep new Obamacare tax on the insurance coverage they offer workers, unless they take steps to reduce overall spending on the plans. A new analysis released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 26 percent of employers offer health benefits that could be subject to the Affordable Care Act's "Cadillac" tax on high-cost plans when it starts in 2018. The tax kicks in when the total spending on a health plan — including the employer and employee premium contributions — exceeds $10,022 for an individual or $27,500 for a...

For the millions of Californians with job-based health coverage, this one’s for you. And it’s a doozy. Starting in 2018, a hefty Obamacare excise tax — known informally as the “Cadillac tax” — will target high-cost health insurance plans offered by employers.

To avoid the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “Cadillac tax” on rich benefit plans, companies are adding surcharges of $100 a month or more to wives and husbands of workers, hoping spouses will seek coverage elsewhere, new employer data shows. The Cadillac tax was created as part of the Affordable Care Act largely as a way to help subsidize benefits to the uninsured under the law. Starting in 2018, employers pay a 40 percent tax on costs of health plans that are above $10,200 per individual and $27,500 for family coverage. The idea behind the so-called “spousal surcharge” employers are implementing...

Democrats and unions have been steadfast in their defense of Obamacare, except for one provision: the controversial "Cadillac" tax. But will the bipartisan desire to repeal the tax be enough to get approved by President Obama? The "Cadillac" tax got its name because it goes after very expensive healthcare plans. The tax, intended to generate revenue for Obamacare, starts in 2018, and will tax 40 percent of the value of health plans that exceed $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family. There's some bipartisan momentum to repeal the tax, as there are two bills in the House that...

St. Paul Public Schools employees are likely to see their health benefits curtailed as the school district looks to avoid financial penalties set to begin in 2018. The Affordable Care Act's "Cadillac Tax" provision will charge employers an excise tax on high-cost plans -- 40 percent on every dollar over $10,200 on individual and $27,500 on family plans. Jeni Simon, a consultant with Aon Hewitt, told school board members Tuesday that companies already are redesigning their health plans in order to avoid paying the tax. A survey found 92 percent of U.S. employers expect their health plans to change by...

Nearly two-thirds of companies facing a new ObamaCare tax say they are changing their coverage to avoid the extra costs, according to a new survey. The so-called Cadillac tax, which applies to healthcare plans above a certain expense threshold, is one of the most pressing changes still to come under ObamaCare. Only 2.5 percent of companies that would be hit by the Cadillac tax starting in 2018 said they plan to pay the tax. A total of 62 percent of companies said they have already taken action or plan to take action to avoid it. Most say they are shifting...

Earlier this month, the Obama administration reversed course on spending cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage program. Instead of a nearly 1% cut in payments, private health insurers that offer Advantage plans to seniors would get a 1.25% boost. The turnabout hardly made news, which isn't surprising since it was the third year in a row that the administration said it was planning to cut payments only to reverse course. It is, however, emblematic of the fiscal trouble ObamaCare has planted in the federal budget.

**SNIP** Requiring employees to shoulder more of the cost burden may undermine public support for Obamacare just as Congress, now firmly under Republican control, considers new ways to gut the law. The tax takes effect in 2018, and employers are already laying the groundwork to make sure they don’t have to pay the 40 percent surcharge on health-insurance spending that exceeds $27,500 for a family or $10,200 for an individual. Once envisioned as a tool to slow the nation’s growing health-care tab, the tax has in practice meant higher out-of-pocket health- care costs for workers. “I don’t think there’s any...

The so-called Obamacare Cadillac Tax is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2018. It is a 40% non-deductible tax on the cost of medical insurance plans that exceed "predetermined thresholds". The "predetermined thresholds" will be determined by government appointees. The Cadillac Tax is supposed to raise $80 billion over ten years to finance the expansion of health coverage. The reality is that the Obamacare Cadillac Tax will ultimately diminish the quality of medical insurance coverage for tens of millions of Americans because no entities will be able to afford to pay it. The cost of the tax is beyond what...

<p>"....At a town hall meeting on health care on July 23, 2009 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Obama explained that the thinking of the Cadillac tax was to target plans that spend unnecessarily and excessively, thus driving up health care costs, such as a $25,000 plan, "so one that's a lot more expensive and a lot fancier than the one that even members of Congress get."</p>

Limbaugh "... Ted Kennedy was in on the scam and Gruber was proud of it and was out telling everybody what a great guy Ted Kennedy was for helping come up with a way to scam the federal government with Obamacare. ..."

On June 13, 2012, Obamacare Jonathan Gruber was interviewed by Frontline. He told them that the Cadillac tax issue was addressed in 2009. Obama knew it was going to be a problem, and they all agreed to lie about it. What Jonathan Gruber is taking heat for right now, was planned out specifically with Barack Obama. It wasn’t just him. It was all of them, with Obama in the room taking part.

A third video has surfaced of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber bragging about pulling the wool over the eyes of the American public in order to help implement Obamacare. “It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012. He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being.

A national business group representing the nation’s large employers reported Wednesday that companies desperate to avoid a 40 percent ObamaCare “Cadillac tax” are finding ways to shift the costs to workers. The so-called “Cadillac tax,” now four years away, will affect health plans that spend more than $10,200 per worker. Meanwhile, employers are shifting workers into plans with higher deductibles, just as ObamaCare does in the health care exchanges, and using health savings accounts to help defray the costs.

See? There’s something in this law for everyone, just not exactly the way they said.But take heart, America. Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News is on it, sending investigative reporters to look into the “fine print” of Obamacare. Isn’t that something that would have been more useful four years ago? Now NBC’s found out that large companies— add ‘em to the small companies and individual market plans—are also reducing benefits, raising co-pays and deductibles to cope with Obamacare’s new costs. So, if you have a catastrophic plan in the individual market, you’re losing the plan you may have liked...