Here's a quintessential Politico headline for you: Are Democrats crippling Obamacare? The tagline: "The president's party helped deliver a key blow to his signature program" reinforces their very favorite themes of all—Democrats in disarray and Obamacare in jeopardy. The issue in question, the so-called Cadillac tax and the bipartisan support in Congress to delay its implementation by two years. Politico's interpretation is that this is a linchpin of Obamacare and without it, it is crippled.
By voting to delay the so-called Cadillac tax as part of a year-end budget deal, Democrats knocked out an economic pillar critical to achieving one of its central goals — tamping down U.S. health care spending. Obama and the Democrats pursued that goal at great political cost. But if it falls by the wayside, Barack Obama may have his own party to blame for his diminished legacy. […]
By joining with Republicans to delay the Cadillac tax, in particular, the president’s party chose the short-term demands of organized labor—a key ground-game player going into an election year—over the long-term goals of Obamacare. They offered fresh ammunition to Republicans who say the law is a money pit. And they showed a lack of political will to make Americans change their habits on health care spending.
Let's just revisit the paramount goal of Obamacare: increasing access to health care by getting more people insured. The "Cadillac tax" in reality is about providing less healthcare—making people use less of it by making it more expensive to do so, all in the name of "tamping down" healthcare spending overall. Except for the people actually needing healthcare, who aren't seeing any of their costs reduced, but are paying more and more in co-pays and deductibles and other out of pocket costs.
In fact, a 2013 survey found that 60 percent of large employers were looking ahead to the tax and that it would affect their benefit strategies over the next two years. Last June, PWC's Health Research Institute reported that ahead of the tax, "employers accelerate cost-shifts" to employees. And the CEO of the National Business Group on Health warned in August that, "[e]mployers only have two more years to bend the cost curve before the excise tax goes into effect in 2018," and so "are pursuing several strategies to keep their plans under the excise tax threshold." Meaning forcing more of the cost of healthcare onto employees.
That's looking at the wrong side of the rising cost of healthcare. As Steven Brill, author of "America’s Bitter Pill" argues, the real flaw in the law is that in order to get the drug companies and hospitals, providers and other industry players to go along with it, there is still "a very powerful industry that has the freedom to charge whatever." That's where the focus in cutting costs should be placed.
There were a couple of very real threats to the law that could have indeed crippled it. The Supreme Court set them aside in upholding the law's constitutionality and the tax subsidies enrollees receive. The delay, and probable repeal of this tax isn't going to destroy the law and Democrats are not going to be responsible for it, however much Politico might like the prospect.