Matt Yglesias writes:

The House bill, financed overwhelmingly by income taxes on high earners, will represent a large aggregate shift of national resources from the wealthy to the poor and near-poor. It will also represent a large shift of resources from things that are not health care services to things that are health care services. The Senate bill is not like that at all. It is much more mildly redistributive, but its redistribution is overwhelmingly contained within the health care system via taxes on “cadillac” health plans, medical devices, plastic surgery, etc.

Hmm. Define "mildly redistributive." The main financing device provided by the Senate bill is the increase in the Medicare tax on persons earning more than $200,000 per year. This is is a redistributive tax, though not as redistributive as the House tax proposal. Yglesias' description of the excise tax also does not square with the selling of it by other Village wonks - to wit, that it will move money out of health costs to increased wages. Now that claim strikes me as ludicrous, but it is interesting that Yglesias forgets it. Maybe he realizes it is not true. And that in fact, the excise tax is designed to be quite regressive.

Speaking for me only