I never see this discussed on the news, the pundit shows, or anywhere else.
Want to know the dirty little secret about why the wealthy hate Obamacare?
3.8%
We hear the right-wing screaming all the time about Obamacare, of course, and how it's a travesty that will destroy freedom, take our guns and womenfolk, and will destroy Christmas! We have op-eds from people like Edie Stansby telling us of one horror after another. Even our well-to-do friends on Facebook bemoan their premium increases...while the middle class right wingers keep saying that they'll be paying the tab for the poor and the "takers," etc. It's all tied together, of course; those middle class folks are being fed that by the puppet masters.
Make no mistake about it, the wealthy hate Obamacare. And it's got nothing to do with premiums.
it's got to do with a single number: 3.8%
Remember that number. Shout that number.
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.
Make sure you point that out to the blue collar guy on Facebook who tells you that he's paying for the freeloaders. He is indeed, but he's looking in the wrong direction when he turns his gaze DOWN.