President Barack Obama will propose reducing the bite of the unpopular “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health insurance plans in the budget he releases next week, in a bid to preserve a key element of the Affordable Care Act.
Jason Furman, the White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the president’s plan would reflect regional differences in the cost of health care, reducing the tax’s bite where care is particularly expensive.
“This policy prevents the tax from creating unintended burdens for firms located in areas where health care is particularly expensive, while ensuring that the policy remains targeted at overly generous plans over the long term,” Furman wrote in the Journal article.
