Job-sponsored health care may be targeted for taxation

[Plausible]

Good Lord, I hope the Democrats fight this.

"Job-sponsored health plans may be targeted for taxation

By Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers Wed Jul 13, 5:32 PM ET

WASHINGTON - For 60 years, American workers have received job-sponsored health-care benefits that are excluded from income and payroll taxes, but now they're in danger of taxation.
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An odd coalition of groups from both the right and left wants to tax those benefits, and a special presidential commission is weighing whether to recommend ending their tax exemption when issuing its report Sept. 30 on how to overhaul the tax system.

On Capitol Hill, aides to tax-writing committee chairmen said ending the exemption had become "background chatter" in both chambers of Congress, where lawmakers are meeting privately in search of consensus on how to close expected funding gaps for
Social Security and Medicare."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050713/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_healthtax_wa;_ylt=AslxAOiHH_szndnst.tRfPbE_8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[newamericanpatriot]

1. The Bush Administration....

is a pack of thieves and liars.

[bullimiami]

2. really what in the fuck is wrong with them.

tax exemptions for anyone rich, any big corporation, anyone who doesnt need it but tax, tax and tax again on food, water, healthcare, gas, grannys medicine ... anything the poor slob cant help but need.


these bastards should rot in hell for this and for where they spend this money they steal.

[shrike]

4. WTF is right

Just when I think they can't possibly come up with anything new to do to us, they surprise me.

[Zenlitened]

3. This guy at the "Progressive" Policy Institute seems to have...

... an unobstructed view of his own colon:

Left-leaning advocates call for ending the tax exclusion for job-sponsored health benefits in the name of fairness. They think the benefits are an invisible tax break for wealthier Americans that's unavailable to poorer ones, who generally don't get job-based health insurance.

"The tax break is regressive because people at the lower-income brackets get less benefit. It does just the opposite of what it should," said David Kendall, a senior health-policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, a research center for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "It promotes coverage for people who can already afford it."

Um, the solution Mr. Shit-for-brains, is to extend coverage to those who don't have it -- not snatch it from the hands of those who do. Does it occur to you that taxing people on the margin or in the middle will only prompt more of them to drop their health care coverage?

What a complete idiot. And a DLC-er, sooprize, sooprize.

Boy, it gets easier and easier to believe that the DLC is nothing more than a front organization for the right-wing. :grr: