Health Care and the Fall of Obama
by Ron Radosh
If you want to know why President Obama’s poll ratings are slipping daily, and why in Massachusetts the unthinkable may actually occur- a win for Republican Senate hopeful Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley in the forthcoming Special Election- look no further than the new deals being made in an effort to pass health care legislation.
As a New York Times blog explains today, “the White House and Congressional leaders struck a tentative deal with organized labor groups on a proposal to tax high-cost, employer-sponsored insurance policies as one way to pay for the legislation. The bill the Senate passed included a version of this excise tax that the Congressional Budget Office said would generate $149 billion over 10 years toward the cost of the legislation. But after making changes to mollify organized labor groups and reduce the number of union-sponsored insurance plans that will be hit by the excise tax, the version of the tax to be included in the final bill will probably generate only $90 billion, officials said.”
