Tax break for employer health plans a target again

[cal04]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101128/ap_on_bi_ge/us_employer_health_plans

Job-based health care benefits could wind up on the chopping block if President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans get serious about cutting the deficit.

Budget proposals from leaders in both parties have urged shrinking or eliminating tax breaks that help make employer health insurance the leading source of coverage in the nation and a middle-class mainstay.

(snip)
"There is no short-term prospect of enactment," former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a leading Democratic adviser on health care. "However, in a tax reform (and) deficit reducing context in the long term, the prospects are much better," said Daschle. He opposes repealing the tax break by itself, but says he would be "willing to look" at it with other changes that improve access to quality health care while reducing costs.

(snip)
Tampering with health care tax breaks is "a terrible step in the wrong direction," said Mary Kay Henry, the new president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents many hospital workers. "We want the middle class stabilized, not destabilized."

[xchrom]

1. lol -- oh. my. nt

[underpants]

2. "a terrible step in the wrong direction," sums it up perfectly

Obama COME ON MAN don't throw this out as a bargaining chip you plan to retract you know damn well they will seize on this and never let it go.

COME ON MAN!!

[WinkyDink]

3. The "Middle-class" must be brought low, or else "the economy" will falter. THAT is the logic, and

the plan.

The "rising tide" was never aimed at bringing up the world's poor masses who work for pennies a week; it was always planned to DROWN unions, to REDUCE U.S. AND EUROPEAN WAGES.

To enrich further the world's multi-billionaires who dance the Masque of the Red Death.

[DrDan]

4. tax healthcare - but tax breaks for the wealthy -

[Autumn]

5. Isn't it amazing where we the people fall on

their scale? No reason for employers to help provide insurance,not when we will be required to pay for it. They really don't like us.:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[endless october]

6. if they want to save billions, end the wars.

[lolly]

7. Would this wake people up?

Maybe all those people comfortably covered by an employer health plan who are convinced that any effort at universal health care is SOCIALIST will have a change of heart when their health care is yanked out from under them?

[ljm2002]

8. "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it"...

...now who was it said that?

Oh. Right. It was President Obama during the time the health care (sic) bill was being discussed.

Remember? He reassured people that HCR would not touch existing plans. I remember being annoyed at the facile phrase, because it left out some other relevant facts. Such as the fact that you could have also said, "If you don't like your health care plan, you will be forced to keep it".

Well it turns out it may all be moot, since health care and insurance costs continue to rise, coverage continues to dwindle and deductibles and copays continue to go up.

Once again, our government has made its priorities clear: 1 - foreign wars; 2 - more profits for the elites; 3 - less taxes for the rich; 4 - austerity for the rest of us.