In a little mentioned part of the health care “reform” pushed by the president, employers will have to pay whopping taxes if they offer top notch health care benefits.  These are the so-called “Cadillac” health care plans.  The logic behind this, they say, is to cut down on unneeded tests and medicines.   Right, like patients are out there demanding excess treatment.

Reed highlights the case of Abbey Bruce and the story shows a photo of her pushing a mop on a cleaning job she’s taken to pay for the big drop in her health care coverage. She had to quit school to find time for the jobs. Her health care deductible has quadrupled and the amount she could pay in medical has doubled.  Her husband has cystic fibrosis.

Employers would have to pay a 40% tax on any money they pay out over the “Cadillac” minimum in Obama’s plan so you know they will do anything to go to a cheaper plan.

I’ve already noted in an earlier post about a CT public employee whose contact changed and whose share of costs jumped from $1,500 to $3,300 a year.

AFL-CIO leaders should be raked over the coals for agreeing to this “Lousy Insurance for All” plan of Obama’s.  Millions of workers will get worse insurance, or pay lots more for it or lose all insurance (with companies opting to pay the fine instead).

On paper US. companies making over $18 million a year are taxed at 35%.  That’s strictly on paper though.   Steven Rattner writing in the New York Times said “the effective corporate tax rate in the United States fell to 17.8 percent in 2012 from 42.5 percent in 1960.”  But who knows what kind of deals Actavis can make in the land of the leprechaun.  As reported in the last post Apple paid only 2% there.

Can you imagine, companies in the 1960’s paid nearly half their profits to the U.S. government and somehow survived?  Survived, business was booming!

Rattner suggests we deal with this by raising taxes on shareholders.  Good luck with that.  Right now money you make from sitting on your butt and collecting dividends is taxed at a lower rate than money you make sweating in a factory or in an office.

Apple has $102 billion “offshore”.  According to the U.S. tax code it doesn’t pay U.S. tax until it brings that money home and why should it?  CNN Money says the law allows it to invest that money anywhere it wants, even in the USA.

Now Apple does actually pay U.S. taxes. $6 billion last year.  The “Daily Beast” writes about 30 companies that paid no taxes at all in 2011.  You might have heard of the names of a few of these “poor” companies: Wells Fargo, Mattel, Boeing, Duke Energy.

In 2010 GE went one better.  That year according to Citizens for Tax Justice, “General Electric paid zero dollars in federal taxes and collected $4.7 billion in tax rebates.”

P.S. In an article on May 23 Joe Nocera  quotes Senator Levin talking about Apple’s  business in Ireland that on paper is making all the money.  He says, “ It has no employees. It has no offices. “

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

Of course, he’s right.  We all will pay for the science deniers and fossil fuel executives willful ignorance and greed.  They will say, “This is in bad taste.  We should grieve, etc, etc”  Unfortunately people forget real quick.  They need to be reminded about our path to climate disaster with every weather disaster (whether we can prove that particular event was caused by global warming or not).

Here’s the source of the quote.

It’s made up of jet black waste from Canadian tar sands.  The U.S. no longer allows the stuff to be burned in the U.S., but the Koch family sends it to Mexico or China were its used for fuel.  The governments there aren’t that particular about air quality (witness Beijing).

The petroleum coke waste comes from tar sands of Alberta Canada, the same gunk that the carbon criminals want to send down the Keystone XL pipeline.  The refine the bitumen and the coke waste is left.  Coke is actually used in steel making, but there’s too much sulphur in petroleum coke so it can’t be used.

Detroit can’t do much about it.  The Michigan governor overthrew local government and appointed a bankruptcy lawyer to be in charge.

After you read the article on the NYT site read the comments.  Some are quite excellent.

Here’s a link to the groups’s website.  (Full disclosure.  I’m part of the group.)

 Seven Talks at the April conference

Another Seven Including Kovel and Williams

“We Want People to Stop Despoiling Our Land” – Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong

What are You an Indian Lover? – Brian Ward

It’s Not Just the Tar Sands.  It’s Uranium and Radiation – Canadian Reservations - Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong

watch this link for more videos

One hopes leading climate activists won’t fall for this hooey.  We desperately need these regs and incentives on top of stopping Keystone XL.  Recall the pipeline has been described as the “largest carbon bomb” on the planet, a world whose energy companies already own 5 times more fossil fuel than is safe to use.

Again I advise that activists prepare now for very large, very angry demonstrations to break with the Democrats once and for all.

Later in the day another NYT article pointed out that the U.S. which used to have the lowest percent of young people without jobs (compared to Canaqda and European countries) now has the highest. Since 2000 the number has gone from 18.5 to 26.6% in the age group 26-34.  The lack of jobs for young people was reported on last August on this blog here.

And we have to mention the news about the sharp increase in the suicide rate in the U.S.  The biggest increase is among the baby boomer generation.  Dr. Julie Philips at Rutgers said, “The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but I think perhaps it hasn’t panned out that way.”  Read the “comment” on the article by Jen D about how joblessness slowly destroyed her brother and drove him to suicide.

May 13, a major article on austerity and suicide on the New York Times, click here

Besides people losing insurance there are lot of people whose co-pay deductions have skyrocketed.  In one instance I know about a public employee saw her co-pay go up from $1,500 to $3,300 a year, this when she got no raise at all.

Many more are worried that once the new law takes effect their companies will just drop their insurance completely and pay the fine instead.

Most of the uninsured will have to buy individual insurance plans with some government help.

When the smoke clears I predict for the average person it will be LIFA “Lousy Insurance for All”.

Single-payer, Medicare-for-all, Canadian Plan whatever you want to call a rational way of covering costs was never considered by the Obama regime.