Unions to Get Obamacare Tax Delay in Senate Budget Deal

President had ruled out a deal that included any conservative goals

Labor unions are poised to score the delay of an ObamaCare tax in the bipartisan budget deal emerging in the Senate.

The bargain under negotiation would make small adjustments to the healthcare law, including delaying the law's reinsurance fee for one year. The three-year tax is meant to generate revenue that will stabilize premiums on the individual market as sick patients enter the risk pool.

Comments

[Calvin Coolidge]

This is one of the many reasons why social engineering via a republican form of government is such a bad idea.

The ACA scheme is very delicate. Because they don't trust individuals to make decisions and the invisible hand to find the equilibrium, they have to precisely engineer a series of carrots and sticks in order to get to the outcome that the Top Men have agreed upon.

Of course, in practice, the Top Men's schemes are shredded by the legislatiure. Incentives are sweetened, penalties are redirected toward politically unpopular groups, the center cannot hold.

The whole assumption that ACA will be the key to the electoral promised land for congrssional Democrats is based on the notion that enough new money will be available from taxes and penalties to keep premiums from rising with all the new demand, new coverage requirements, and new regulations. But, the very congresspeople counting on this to work are the ones now voting to let their buddies in the unions put off having to comply.

There is just no way that this ends in anything other than a premium death spiral.