While I oppose the President’s health care proposals (old and new), I have to give the White House staff credit for a slick new website in advance of Thursday’s Blair House health care debate.

I will highlight a few policy elements of the President’s new proposal, then turn to tactical analysis.

Major changes in the President’s proposal

  1. Like the Senate bill, the President’s proposal would raise taxes on wages by 0.9 percentage points for individuals with incomes > $200K and families with incomes > $250K. In addition, the President’s new proposal would impose a 2.9 percent tax “on income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, and rents” for those with income above $200K (individuals) and $250K (families). Flowthrough income from ownership in a small business or partnership would not be subject to this tax.
  2. The President’s proposal delays the taxes on pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. It appears (but we can’t be certain) that they intend to raise the same amount of revenue from these industries, meaning that the per-year tax would go up.
  3. The “Cadillac tax” has been delayed to begin in 2018 and the threshholds would be $27K for families (as opposed to $23K in the Senate bill). The Senate-passed levels were so high as to be absurd – they would apply to almost no one. This exacerbates that problem. No word on whether union plans are still exempt.
  4. The President would create a new federal Health Insurance Rate Authority “to provide needed oversight at the Federal level and help States determine how rate review will be enforced and monitor insurance market behavior.” Health plans would therefore be subject to state and federal rate regulation. I presume this is a reaction to the recent California/Anthem premium hike story.

Strategy and tactics

Far more interesting than the substance of the new proposal (which is excruciatingly detailed) is trying to understand what Team Obama is trying to do with it.

Speaker Pelosi released a statement that she “look