How would you like your free health care? With some high taxes on the side, please.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal put a number on how much more in taxes middle-class earners will have to pay if the Baucus bill goes through. The plan is an insurance “exchange,” which means that families and individuals can pick and choose from a menu of heavily subsidized health-care policies. Someone will have to pay for the cost of that “free lunch,” which the CBO estimated would reach $461 billion in ten years. Here is what it means:

Think about a family of four earning $42,000 in 2016, which is between 150% and 200% of the federal poverty level. CBO says a mid-level “silver” plan will cost about $14,700 in premiums, of which the family will pay $2,600—since the government would pay the other $12,100. If the family breadwinner (or breadwinners, because the subsidies are based on combined gross income) then gets a raise or works overtime and wages rise to $54,000, the subsidy drops to $9,900. That amounts to an implicit 34% tax on each additional dollar of income.

The whole thing here.