Administration, labor leaders set stage for today's meeting regarding proposed 'Cadillac' tax

The president is expected to meet Monday afternoon with labor leaders who oppose a tax on high-cost insurance premiums that the president has backed, The Associated Press/The New York Times reports. The labor leaders argue "it would hurt union members who negotiated good health benefits instead of salary increases." Setting the stage for today's meeting, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sought to differentiate the plan from a similar proposal offered by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as he campaigned against Obama for the presidency. McCain would have eliminated all tax exclusion on health benefits.

The AP reports: "The approaches are 'fundamentally different,' Gibbs said. Labor leaders say they aren't so different, arguing that the tax on so-called 'Cadillac' insurance plans would get passed down to working people." Many House lawmakers also oppose the plan, but the Senate has embraced it, and the president has argued it would help bring down overall health spending (1/11).

MarketWatch adds, "'Instead of taxing the rich,' as the House bill does, 'the Senate bill taxes the middle class by taxing workers' health plans,' AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Monday in a speech at the National Press Club. ... The meeting comes as House and Senate lawmakers are trying to meld their separate health-care bills into a single version for Obama to sign, in time for his State of the Union speech." It's likely that the final bill will include some version of the tax (Schroeder, 1/11).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.