“They are going to be screaming mad”

One of the things which hasn’t received all that much attention yet (because it doesn’t kick in until after the next presidential election) is the so-called “Cadillac Tax.” Employers are already responding by shifting costs to workers:

Employers at risk of being hit with the “Cadillac tax” provision in the Affordable Care Act are shifting more costs to workers and incentivizing healthier employee lifestyles to avoid the tax, experts say.

Meanwhile unions charge the tax will hollow out benefits for workers.

The tax targets high-cost, richer benefit health insurance plans — so-called Cadillac plans that often have wider provider networks and menus of covered services and lower copays and deductibles.

Under the law, plans that cost more than $10,200 for individuals and more than $27,500 for families will face a 40 percent tax on the amount over the threshold.

Although the tax doesn’t start until 2018, employers are now “passing the cost onto employees in higher premiums and more cost sharing or requiring higher deductibles and copays” and scaling back offerings, said health policy consultant Julie Piotrowski.

Lovely. Just what we need to give the economy that “boost” the Obamanoids like to talk about.

Megan McArdle predicts that if this tax is allowed to go into effect, many millions of Americans will be screaming bloody murder:

Assuming that the Cadillac tax goes into effect (though I’m still sort of skeptical), a whole lot of those in the 80 percent category are going to lose a plan they liked because the government made it too expensive for companies to keep delivering it. Yes, of course, companies already cancel plans quite frequently. But these cancellations are going to happen all at once, because the law demanded it.

Moreover, the people who end up in those plans won’t just be choosing them as the cost of other plans goes up; they’ll be forced into them because the other plans aren’t offered at all. They are going to be screaming mad, and Democrats should not delude themselves that they will be soothed by all the marvelous things that may then be happening in the individual market. That’s why I still think there is a good chance that this gets rolled back before it goes into effect — but that is going to create its own, not insubstantial, budget problem: The Cadillac tax is supposed to raise about $80 billion by 2023.

McArdle warns ominously that this “is going to bring on a long and lasting wave of public outrage starting sometime around March of next year.”

Nice. Just a month before April 15.

Just in time to further swell the ranks of the Tea Party.