New Taxes for Health Care Help Obama ‘Spread the Wealth Around’
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:43PM 
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said on the campaign trail in October 2008 that he wanted to “spread the wealth around.” With Obama on the verge of signing sweeping health-care overhaul legislation, he’s about to do just that.
High-income investors would pay higher Medicare taxes, tax breaks for out-of-pocket medical deductions would be curtailed, and it would cost insurance companies more to pay executives millions of dollars. Those levies will help fund expansion of Medicaid services for the poor and subsidize health insurance to cover millions who don’t currently have benefits.
“It’s very clear that taxes are levied on the wealthy and the benefits will spread across the entire income distribution, with a lot going to expanded Medicaid distribution and expanding health insurance,” said Roberton Williams, an economist at the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research institute backed by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. “One couldn’t claim he didn’t keep that promise” to “spread the wealth around.”
In all, the bill would generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by 2019, according to an analysis by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan agency. The bill also imposes about $69 billion more in penalties for individuals and businesses who don’t meet mandates to buy insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office, another nonpartisan agency.
Higher Medicare Taxes
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