Cost Shifting on Working Families

Talk about having it both ways!
When Howard Dean was Chair of the DNC, the DNC website carried critiques of [candidate] McCain’s scheme to replace tax exemptions for employer-sponsored coverage with “tax credits’
"For millions of middle class families, the [proposed] credit is smaller than the current tax subsidies, meaning that it is in fact a tax increase"
Now here in 2009, the Democrats are singing a different tune…or speaking out of the other side of their faces, take your pick. Their “plan” is to tax so-called employer-sponsored “Cadillac Plans”. Their definition of a Cadillac Plan is a plan that provides all medically-necessary coverage. The Democrats are saying their scheme will create anywhere from $135 - $300 billion in new revenues each year.
Employers will not pony-up the additional billions. Instead, they will deduct it from other remunerations, like wages, pensions, and vacation pay.
That is “cost shifting”! The Democratic “plan” (like McCain’s “plan”) shifts costs onto the backs of the working class!
The richest 400 families in the U.S. have a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion. (Family members of former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist – founders of the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America – are included in the wealthiest 400.)
A 5% surtax on $1.57 would produce $78 billion annually. A 5% surtax on the wealthiest 3000 families (1/100,000 of the population) would produce much more than the $135 - $300 billion that Democrats are willing to impose on working America.
There are many more parts of the proposed “reform” legislation that likewise sell us out. No wonder. The medical-profits industry continues to spend $1.4 million per day lobbying Congress.
The whole lot of them (with perhaps a few exceptions) should be tossed out on their asses. GOP leaders are a hoard of sociopaths, and influential Democrats are back-stabbing sell out artists.
Wake up America! Corporate “investments” into political campaigns continue to purchase the kind of results that allow 400 families to amass so much wealth, while so many of our people are living in desperation.
Two-faced Democratic double-crossers are saying something in 2009 that directly contradicts what they were saying in 2008. And working class America is paying the price for the criminal acts of malfeasance and misfeasance that are being committed by lawmakers who [in theory] are sworn to represent us.
One could say we have an all-American Congress. “Made and sold in the USA!” Wake up! It’s been happening for three decades!
Stop being sheep.