According to the NYT's economic correspondent, David Leonhardt, the healthcare passage is the biggest attack on wealth inequality that the United States has undergone in decades.
Essentially, this is the beginning of a reversal of the decisions wrought by Ronald Reagan.
HCR is the biggest attack on Wealth Inequality in Decades
To those who have wondered precisely what this complicated, flawed and bulking behemoth of a bill will do. I'm going to explain in broad strokes. Obama's trying to "spread the wealth around". This is a very good thing.
For the last three decades of US history, we've seen a sharp rise of income in terms of wealth going towards the rich but starting today, we're beginning to reverse that in that the middle class and the poor begin to get help that they've long needed.
Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.
Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.
This is Obama's centerpiece at the attack of Ronald Reagan. Yes, it's got no public option, and no medicare buy in and no drug reimportation but please look at what this bill has.
A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.
The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.
Here's what I'll say of liberal critics of this bill. Call this bill flawed. Call it imperfect. Call it bulking. Call it "full of compromises". But do not EVER call it a "sellout" or a "mistake". This bill is the end of Reagan that progressives have been asking for years for, to start. This is the end of era of Reagan and perhaps, the beginning of the era of Obama.