I am just returning from a brief respite in time to continue to keep us up-to-date on President Obama's need for our continued support in passing his Healthcare Reform Stimulus Plan.
According to the Urban Institute researchers, the best question to be answered about financing healthcare reform is how to pay for it. As I bring you up to date on the challenging healthcare reform issues while the fight for such healthcare reform intensifies, one of the more significant options to finance healthcare would be to limit the tax exclusions for Employer-Sponsored Insurance ("ESI"). (See, "Changes to the Tax Exclusion of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Premiums: A Potential Source of Financing for Health Reform" by Clemans-Cope L, Zuckerman S and Williams R;
http://www.rwjf.org/healthreform/product.j... Currently, the playing field for ESI must be leveled because it is greatly imbalanced. This imbalance is the fact that ESI creates a federal tax subsidy for employers of about $240 billion. This allows higher-income workers to benefit the most. This also allows lower-income families to pay the largest percent of income on insurance and they get the smallest subsidy. In taking a closer look at this option, that would mean that about 75 percent of the initial cap on ESI tax exclusion would generate approximately $224 billion over ten years for healthcare. At this rate, 90 percent of the existing subsidy can be retained causing the after-tax income to drop below 1 percent in year 2010 with the average percent of change being very modest for most income groups. In this scenario, the Urban Institute experts caution, however, that the tax exclusion would really do very little to constrain health care costs. Is this enough?
Yes, initially, because although any effects on cost growth would likely be modest and considering that the vast majority of the current tax exclusion would remain in place, the tax exclusion would not only provide funding for health care reform, but it would also relieve the burdensome and costly inequities considering how today's treatment of employer contributions to premiums is ineffective. Therefore, ESI is indeed important to contributing to the reduction of healthcare costs in the US to aide healthcare reform.
Join Healthcare For America Now at
www.healthcareforamericanow.org Support DC for Obama at
www.DCforObama.org Agnes B. Levine
Founder/President, Levine-Oliver Publisher
www.levineoliverpublisher.com, Author of: "Cooling Well Water: A Collection of Work By An
African-American Bipolar Woman" ISBN 13 978-0-9754612-0-4
Available NOW at Amazon.com
Posted By: agnes levine
Thursday, July 23rd 2009 at 7:03AM
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