Health Insurance QuestionFollow

My boss came in to my office today telling me how Obama's new health care plan is going to make our business-offered-insurance cost count as taxable income for individual employees. I'm not sure how it works in most places of business, but currently ours is payed in full by the company unless we want to add family members. Is this news to anyone else or did I miss the bus on that one? I couldn't find any info on it.

Ah so its still in the works... He made it sound like it was a done deal and we were all screwed. Sounds like a typical republican eh?

Employer-provided health insurance is part of true compensation ... why some people will take a job with lower salary if the "benefits" make up for it.

If it's not treated as taxable income, then people without employer-provided health insurance are paying an unfair share of the health care bill.

Big corporations are better able (compared to small businesses) to negotiate favorable insurance costs for their employer-povided plans.

Not taxing it screws the little guy.

Of course back during the presidential campaign, anti-McCain commercials slammed McCain for supposedly saying it should be taxed.

KT,



To be fair he's planning ahead so when this god awful bill gets pushed through by the Dems blame your situation on them.


Cat,



Now do you really think a couple of hundred dollars a year is going to pay for any comprehensive health care policy? Come on I thought you were smarter than that.



Edited, Jun 19th 2009 1:14pm by publiusvarus

well, its a couple hundred in taxes, the plan of course would cost thousands.

I'll admit my understanding of all this health care stuff is rather limited, but when companies get health insurance is the cost influenced by the avg age of the employees? or even pre-existing conditions? So would a per-person avg be kinda overpriced for young, healthy people and underpriced for older, or unhealthy people?

I mean, if it costs my employer $350 a month/person and i have to pay taxes on that because of the old people then its kinda bogus. Basically, id rather take that 350 bucks and get my own insurance and pocket the rest if it plays out that way.

Or rely on the reformed, government provided healthcare

At least I would hope so.

Public plans are 2-3 times cheaper then the current American system, per person. Literally, the US Federal government alone spends almost as much per person as Canada does, yet in America, only very few are covered and in Canada it covers everyone.

Thus literally you could pay very little more then we pay now and cover everyone.

And this system is thoroughly tested and exists in most every first world nation aside from the US.

At the end of the day, it is not a philosophical question for me. The current US system is insanely expensive and we're committing economic suicide by continuing with it. We can go with well tested solutions we know work or with stuff no one has tried on a large scale. It's health care: you go for the sure thing.

Once we have the sure thing, which is universal, public health care - and we agree we have to make this work - then we can discuss the German system versus the Canadian system, etc.

That something that Keith Olbermann told you guys to say?

(For those of you that don't know, thats some news guy on MSNBC who can't do much besides talk bad about people and only invite guests that he agrees with. Figured I would need to give this little explanation what with its hilariously low ratings compared to FoxNews.. heh)

Well his few dozen viewers must be somewhere. Heck even if not just switch out his name with one of the other conservative bashers with an audience in the double digits.

Liberal viewers prefer good news, while conservative viewers are fine with thoughtless trash by right wing sycophants.

Where does one find this "good news" then? I am curios what the liberals actually deem as good.

And then I know aside from the ones who point out they clearly lean a certain way, Fox news doesn't spout what you consider "thoughtless trash".



That or the same breaking news on one of those west coast forest fires.

Xarus,



You're right about that. Liberal viewers certainly want news/soundbytes that coincide with their socio-political points of view devoid of any opposing viewpoints. Anything else is obviously propaganda.

The fact that many of you think bbc is an unbiased source of news speaks volumes. Would you like to know the dirty little secret about talk radio? They're successful because they discuss topics in depth for days on end. They allow opposing views on their shows and allow them to voice their opinions. Liberal talk radio will always fail because their ideas can't stand up to the scrutiny and criticism. Incidentally this is why liberals would like to force their viewpoints on the general population by means of acts like the "fairness doctrine".