[SamIam]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Sorry, happily married.

Drat! Why does it always seem like the good ones are already taken?

Originally Posted by BigV

best bad news I've heard all day.

hmmm... Let's see - Washington or Washington?

Originally Posted by Griff

There is talk of taxing employer paid insurance plans as income. That'd be pretty brutal for the middle class, I'd think. Seems like a step toward National Health Care but taking the most painful route possible to get there.

That idea has been out on the table for a few years now. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called the employer tax exclusion “The largest single subsidy in the tax code” in a paper they put out in 2009.

The exclusion of employer-provided health insurance from taxable income is considered a “tax expenditure” or “tax subsidy” because it is an exception to the usual rule that all compensation is counted as taxable income. In fact, the employer tax exclusion is the largest single subsidy in the tax code. [1] According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, it reduced federal tax collections by $246 billion in 2007 — $145 billion in income taxes and $101 billion in payroll taxes.

~snip~ Although the tax exclusion provides a big boost to employer-sponsored health coverage, it is poorly targeted. It gives the greatest benefit to those with the highest incomes, although they are the group that least needs help paying for health insurance. The 24 per¬cent of tax units with incomes over $75,000 in 2004 received almost half of the benefits of the exclusion, while the 27 per¬cent of tax units with incomes under $20,000 received just 6 percent of the benefits.