Republicans and their allies are making a lot of different arguments about what Obamacare is doing to America. It’s hiking premiums! It’s making people lose their doctors! It’s destroying Medicare! But if you listen closely, you’ll discern a common theme—a message aimed squarely at the middle class: Obamacare is taking away your money or health insurance, and giving it to somebody else. "If you think about it, it's $250 billion a year in Medicaid expansion, in the subsidy structure, that's basically being paid for by people on Medicare, through Medicare cuts, and a lot of tax increases," James Capretta, a former Bush Administration official now at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, said on Fox News Sunday. "It is a massive, massive income redistribution."

It’s not a novel argument. This is how Republicans have been attacking Democrats at least since the late 1960s, with varying results. For Ronald Reagan, it was a winner. For Mitt Romney, it wasn't. Maybe it will resonate this time and maybe it won't. Honestly, I have no idea. But since we're having this debate, it would be good to clarify who's getting money from the law—and who's providing it. Republicans aren't wrong when they say Obamacare amounts to redistribution. But they seem to have a distorted view of how that redistribution works.

About two-thirds of the law’s spending, a little over $1 trillion in the next decade, will be in the form of tax credits for people buying insurance on the new exchanges. About one third, or about $640 billion, finances the expansion of Medicaid. There's no simple and reliable way to break down exactly how much money goes to people at different income levels. (I've tried!) And it's certainly fair to say that a majority of people getting money from Obamacare are in the lower half of the income scale. But that includes an awful lot of people that qualify as "working class" or "middle class." Remember that the credits are available to people making up to 400 percent of the poverty line, or about $46,000 a year for an individual and $94,000 for a family of four—well above the nation's median income.

So that's the money going out of the federal Treasury thanks to Obamacare. And the money coming in? Here's a list of major sources of revenues and program cuts, based on Congressional Budget Office reports and put together with help from Paul van de Water at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Cuts to Medicare providers, much of it in the form of a “productivity adjustment” that will result in hospitals receiving lower reimbursements … $415 billion