William Gale, an economist at the liberal Brookings Institution, does not like soak-the-rich proposals to fund health care. He really, really doesn’t like it. “Choosing to finance health care reform by taxing the rich is bad economic policy, bad health policy, bad budget policy and poor leadership.” I don’t like his preferred alternative — taxing health benefits — and I’m very sympathetic to what he derides as the “hue and cry” that accompanies tax hikes in general. But it’s worth reading his short piece in its entirety to understand why a prominent liberal economist opposes the House Democrats’ preferred health care reform funding mechanism.
