WHY OBAMACARE SHOULD BE FLATLINED...

We told about the quarterback sneak pulled by the private health industry who finally realized that President Obama was lying like a big dog. As it turns out, more and more economically-based criticism of Obamacare is coming to light. For starters, the tacit ‘approval’ some thought they saw courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office, isn’t that at all. Not if you’re really looking, at least.
While the CBO has said they expect the collect a fair bit of money via the various taxes associated with the plan. But what if they aren’t there? The Congressional Budget Office projections (which are, in this case, the Joint Committee on Taxation's projections, as the CBO doesn't estimate tax revenues) actually suggest that the bulk of the tax's revenues will come from the response to the tax, not the payment of the tax. As the New York Times reports, the JCT believes that "about $142 billion of the 10-year total of $201 billion to be raised by the [excise tax] would come from increased income and payroll taxes." In other words, the vast majority of the revenues would come because employers would "structure their benefits to get around this tax." Workers would receive more of their compensation in wages and less in healthcare benefits, and because wages are taxable and health benefits aren't, tax revenues would go up. The trouble is that the CBO didn't adequately account for the response to the implicit marginal tax created by the sliding scale of subsidies. In other words, the CBO doesn’t fully incorporate the effects of these higher marginal tax rates in their cost estimates.
If taxpayers respond to these new incentives by, say, working less, GDP and tax revenue from income and payroll taxes will go down.
Want the bonus plan? Ask yourself if you’d feel the pinch of a 20 percentage point tax increase. I know I would.