It raised taxes on the super rich
The only question is when will Obamacare will be repealed. And the reason for this sad fate is simple: It raised taxes on the super rich.
It’s tax cutting season — which will be known in the future as “the funeral song for the middle class as we know it.” The 1980 tax breaks were the beginning of the long illness that will destroy the gains of the Great Compression, with slight reprieves in 1993 and 2012 when we raised taxes on the rich, but now our fate of a permanent Gilded Age is set. Right-wing billionaires are sick of paying anything close to their fair share and they’re ready to make you pay
And Obamacare is especially dead because it taxed “net investment income.” If you know this term, you’re likely near the top 5-10 percent of Americans. And you’ve probably claimed it once or twice in your life, maybe when you sold a house. You tax “net investment income” when you’re specifically targeting the wealthiest of investors to help insure to the poorest working Americans, which Obamacare did, which why it — despite some flaws purposely made worse by Republicans –was great, which is why it will be repealed ASAP.
There will be something put into place that the right can call an “Obamacare replacement,” but it will likely be a mishmash of failed ideas and bizarre inventions that will make you more dependent on your employer, if you have one, and even further adrift in economic servitude if you’re attempting to make a living on your own.
Everybody knows there’s no Republican plan to replace Obamacare because Obamacare is the Republican plan. We know this because Paul Ryan wants to replace Medicare with a plan that looks almost exactly like Obamacare.
But we’re beyond any hope of sense or logic or shame winning out now.
All that will remain intact from Obamcare will be the Medicare reforms that are projected to save taxpayers TRILLIONS — even as Paul Ryan is lying by saying that the ACA hurt Medicare as premise to gut both.
Now, barring some cosmic intervention that somehow sways three Republican Senators from approving full repeal, Obamacare will be gone and Medicare is next.
And that’s probably the best fight we can hope for.
