SPEAKING OF OBAMA’S RECORD: Will Democrats Sink the ACA?

Among Democrats, there’s at least one part of the ACA that’s unpopular: the law’s so-called Cadillac tax. This provision, which is supposed to take effect in 2018, taxes plans offered by employers that pass a certain threshold: individual plans that cost over $10,200 annually or family plans that exceed $27,500. The total amount that a company pays over those thresholds for is taxed at 40 percent. Hillary Clinton—as well as some unions—have come out against this tax.

In Bloomberg, Peter Orszag, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, argues that this Democratic opposition to tax is the “biggest legislative threat the Affordable Care Act has faced in the past five years.” . . .

It would be deeply ironic if a Democratic initiative were to so deeply undermine the ACA. We don’t know whether Orszag is correct that the tax would successfully bring down costs, nor do we know whether eliminating the tax will sink the law. It’s certainly true, at the very least, that Democrats would need a clear way to make up the revenue lost by the tax, and the debate over the best place to find that money would likely be contentious. And, of course, it’s by no means guaranteed that those Democrats who oppose the tax will manage to undo it, even were Clinton to become President.

But regardless of how that all shakes out, this story shows that a big and controversial provision of the ACA has yet to implemented, and that stakes around its implementation are high. The debate over the ACA—no less over American health care as a whole—isn’t over. By a long shot.

Related: ObamaCare Premiums Just Keep Rising. I see a lot of my Facebook friends — especially youngish single ones — complaining about rising premiums and absurdly high deductibles. The GOP could make an issue of this, if it were smart. It could likely even target these people using social media. . . .