I'm willing to pay more, BUT please tell me my husband is wrong

[recoveringrepublican]

I haven't really been paying attention. I have 3 kids who are sick right now so forgive me.

My husband told me that Obama is thinking about doing what McCain proposed. Taxing health benefits like regular income. I will be very pissed off if this happens. It just seems like me giving the insurance companies even more money.

I'm willing to pay double, hell triple, in taxes for single payer. I will not bitch about the extra $$, but be elated that my family and I are no longer beholden to a CEO's "medical expertise".

Please tell me what my husband said is complete BS. This will be the one time someone can call my husband a wanker and I will be overjoyed.

[madfloridian]

1. He is right.

They are thinking about it.

[d_b]

2. he's still a wanker though.

[Warpy]

3. Unfortunately he's correct

and if it goes into effect, it will cost the Democrats the next term. The GOP will be back in office and in full strut. It will be ugly and I'd advise Obama to think very carefully about what he wants for this country, long term. If he wants a dictatorship of wealth, then let him tax those benefits.

What I hope will happen is that we get a public option, at least for people over 50 and people with chronic illness. The insurance companies have failed these groups completely.

I would also love to see for profit insurance made a whole lot less profitable by forcing these bastards to provide funding for care that they now delay and deny.

That latter is what will eventually drive them out of business and get us universal single payer. It will have to be a process, though, not done at a stroke of a pen, all at once.

[dkf]

4. This seems very anti-union to me

It also seems like a complete political loser. What a boneheaded thing to even suggest.

[dysfunctional press]

5. it sort of 'evens things out' with the people who have to buy their own health insurance...

but it's the wrong direction to take.

by 'evening it out'- i'm referring to how people who don't have health benefits at work have to pay for insurance out of income(wages) that they have taxes taken out of, making their incomes that much less. health benefits at a job definitely have a monetary value associated with them.

i've heard people trying to defend all these actions as 'obama's playing chess, while everyone else is playing checkers' -personally, i don't see it...but if it all leads to us having single-payer in time for the 2012 elections- he'll retain my vote.
if we end up with a more convoluted and expensive mess than we already have- he won't.

[napi21]

6. John King talked a bit about this time AM. Obama has left that

option on the table, BUT there's something I did not know about it. The statement fron King was "Possibly taxing high income workers for their HC benefits."

Although it's illegal for a company to offer better HC benefits to it's esecutives than they do to the rest of their employees, lots of little things go on behind the scenes. Cute little things, like if the out of pocket copay is $250 for your drugs & $250 for medical visits, the company nicely increases the executives salary by $500 to cover those costs. If an executive wants to travel to the Mayo Clinic for special diagnosis, conviently he has a business trip to that area and the Co. pays for the flights & motel room. Believe me, I was the Dir. of Accounting for a medium sized corp. for a number of years, and I've seen some tricks that boggle the mind.

I can't say that I LOVE the taxing of high paid employees HC benefits, but it's not nearly as bad as when I first heard about this and thought it was EVERYBODIES!

[rvablue]

9. Interesting and insightful. Love learning new things from others' personal and professional

experiences on DU.

I never saw this "taxing benefits" proposal from this angle.

You should think about fleshing this out and reposting it as an OP so it will get more eyes -- because is was eye-opening for me!

[recoveringrepublican]

12. Sorry should have read this before I posted below. I could maybe go along with this

but not taxing us regular folks on a "benefit" that many can't afford the co-pays!

[madfloridian]

7. More on it. Baucus has it on the table. It will cause us to lose if we do it.

It is not ok, as some seem to think. It will absolutely devastate too many people.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/should-health-benefits-be-taxed/?hp

"There are many third rails in the politics of health reform, but probably none with quite the high voltage of one proposal: the idea of taxing part, or all, of the health insurance premiums paid by employers on behalf of their employees.

Some members of Congress — notably the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus — are now stretching their hands gingerly toward that third rail, and sparks are flying even before the rail has been touched.

Under current law, employers can treat the contributions they make to the premiums for their employees’ health insurance as a tax-deductible business expense. On the other hand, employees do not pay income taxes or payroll taxes on this contribution, though it clearly is part of the employees’ total compensation.

In 2007, this tax preference reduced federal tax revenues by an estimated $250 billion or so. Estimates for 2010 have been as high as $297 billion.

Most economists (myself included) and many other health policy experts have long looked askance at this tax preference."

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

17. How do we elect Obama and then get MCCAIN'S healthcare plan courtesy of Baucus?!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/us/politics/01mccain.html

I'd really like to know how something like that happens. If we had wanted McCain's healthcare plan, we would have voted for McCain!

[SoCalDem]

8. That's part of the "plan".. to tax the health benefits "given" to employees

BUT , if employERS get to deduct them, it's a wash-out, except for the employees who will be seeing those things deducted from paychecks, yet ADDED to w-2s..

Let's say the employee's share is $100 a week and the employer "tells" you that HIS/HER share is $300 a week, the employee suddenly "earns" $300 more a week for tax purposes, but the money is siphoned off to the insurance company, and the employee owes taxes on that $300, even though medical services may still be denied..as not covered.. Does the employee get to deduct those expenses?..I'm guessing ..no.

[recoveringrepublican]

10. I knew he wasn't wrong. I agree with an above poster, I don't see how this is "playing chess"

It's just getting everyone pissed off and giving repukes leverage. The insurance companies have screwed us forever and helped create this problem. Why give them more money? This will bump my family into a higher tax bracket and my family (and many others) won't see any direct benefit.

I'm not discounting the indirect benefit I will hopefully see, more people with access to health care, but I just don't see this as the best way to do it.

[FLDCVADem]

11. I oppose taxing the benefits as well

But I'm not seeing how the insurance companies get more money out of this plan. The government definitely will get more money, but the insurers?

[recoveringrepublican]

13. Well if we are keeping the insurance companies as the health providers won't they get the

extra money raised from taxing health benefits? Won't the money raised go to pay for insurance for some of the uninsured?

[FLDCVADem]

14. Is that what the plan is? To buy more health insurance? nt

[recoveringrepublican]

15. I'm ASSuming so. I know single payer seems to not be in play at all. nt

[Chemical Bill]

16. That's nasty.

I emailed President Obama to tell him NO!

Bill

[shanejfilomena]

18. NOT

According to the Government pages and ABC news, it is not Obama himself, but members of the party that are --like Mc Cain---"isle crossers" which to me is the same as cross dressers.

The subject is not the Universal health care he envisioned, but the employer-provided health plans.

The taxing of employer-provided health benefits is a thorny question for any president because it is an issue on which policy and politics collide.

Unless someone can locate a final answer on the issue being signed into law....You have your senators to thank if you get the dirty end of it.