With so much news coverage devoted to GOP efforts to sink the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, the law is facing substantial problems largely of Democrats’ making in the year-end budget deal.
When Democrats joined with Republicans to delay the so-called “Cadillac tax” — designed to curb excessively generous insurance policies that make health care virtually free thereby encouraging overuse — they did so to kowtow to labor unions as the 2016 election season unfolds.
Unions despise the Cadillac tax — and the irony of Democrats undermining a key long term financial pillar of Obamacare to suit their short term political goal of placating labor for the 2016 elections helps spotlight yet another example of Beltway dysfunction.
On a pure health policy level, the Cadillac tax makes economic sense in that it puts downward pressure on healthcare over-utilization, and hence spending.
Nevertheless, if Obamacare ends of withering on the vine in future years, Democrats themselves are far from blameless.