Why do they hate Obamacare so much? This might have something to do with it…
by David Atkins
It’s always been a little puzzling why the entire right wing is still so upset about the Affordable Care Act. No, they don’t want government getting a good name by helping people. They hate the idea of subsidizing the less fortunate in any way. And they’re afraid that the ACA might be a stepping stone toward single-payer.
But still, as progressive critics often point out, the ACA is also something of a giveaway to big business. It mandates health insurance coverage, gives insurance companies millions of new customers and does them the favor of dropping the cost curve and stabilizing the private market, reducing the mounting pressure to adopt a saner single-payer system. That’s why the Heritage Foundation supported it in the first place, as did Mitt Romney in its Massachusetts incarnation.
Under normal circumstances the law should have passed, the Right should have whipped its people into a froth, used it to win an election, then shrugged its shoulders and sat down in some quiet satisfaction as millions of people settled in to their new, somewhat cheaper private insurance. But that’s not what happened. The powers that be on the Right continue to rave and rant against the ACA as if it were the devil’s spawn itself. That’s always been something of a mystery.
Well, perhaps this, courtesy RASalvatore at Daily Kos, might have something to do with it:
You see, up until Obamacare, the truly wealthy in our society, that passive income crowd that dodged the top tax bracket by getting their compensation in capital gains and such, was EXEMPTED from the Medicare portion of FICA.
This tax (2.9%) went up .9% for incomes over 250k under PPACA. .9%’s not that bad, of course, but for those living on passive income, the hit is much larger.
Until now, this law, they were exempt from that tax.
Now they’re not.
Take a guy like Romney – he makes $20,000,000 a year, most if not all of it in the form of passive income. So he was paying at the 15% rate, thanks to the special treatment for such “special” income.
That went up to 20% when parts of hte Bush tax cuts expired in 2012.
And now, to add insult to that injury, Romney’s income is subjected to that dastardly Medicare tax (which, unlike the Social Security portion of FICA, doesn’t cut off at $106,000, or $133,000, or whatever it is this year).
3.8% of $20,000,000 is $760,000 dollars in taxes. That has to sting that generational wealth plan Romney was hatching.
Imagine the hit the Kochs and the hedge fund guys are taking. The 25 top hedge fund guys in 2009 averaged $1Billion each…3.8% of a billion? Get your calculators out: mine says that means about $38,000,000 in new taxes for these guys.
So if they spend a few million trying to kill it, who could blame them, right?
3.8%.
They hate Obamacare. They hate Obama. It’s pretty simple, when you think about it.
That would explain it, don’t you think?
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