The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to repeal a scheduled new “tax” on high-value health care plans offered by employers.
In an environment where bipartisan consensus can be hard to find in Washington DC, it appeared to power a House vote to repeal the pending “Cadillac tax” that would apply to high-value health care plans offered by employers.
From coverage in The Hill:
The wide bipartisan vote of 419-6 illustrates how the tax is one of the few areas of ObamaCare that has opposition across the political aisle.
The tax was designed to help keep health care costs down by discouraging overly-generous “Cadillac” health insurance plans. But both unions and employers opposed the tax, helping to set up a broad coalition against it.
With former President Obama out of office, the main defenders of the tax are now health economists, who say it is a valuable tool to control health care spending.
As always, the proposal’s full passage depends on agreement by the US Senate, and potentially either its passage as a consensus item between the two chambers, or as part of a negotiation/conference between the two.
