All personal politics aside, from a purely financial perspective, how does everybody (here in the US) think the Prez’s new idea for Healthcare will benefit them?
I’m talking you personally, not a price point of another person (that will keep some politics down).
Good thing? Bad thing?
Sorry, I can’t see a way this won’t be political.
–James
Well, from the perspective of someone who was recently buried under $40k+ in medical bills (and practically bankrupted; I had to sell 90% of my project cars including my Mini race cars) because of a frackin’ insurance company…I cannot possibly see the logic in making insurance premiums a tax write off if I don’t have the frackin’ cash to pay for the premiums in the first frackin place.
YMMV
[/doublerant] 
Smoke and mirrors. I don’t yet understand what he’s proposing. As best I can tell from reading this morning’s paper, I think it’s that the amount my employer pays for my health insurance (roughly $7000/yr) would now be counted as income to me. I would then get a tax deduction in that amount so I wouldn’t have to pay federal income taxes on it. Well, I don’t pay federal income taxes on it now. Big deal! I wonder how states would treat this. Many states calculate taxable income based on federal taxable income (makes it easier to just copy the feds) However states have their own systems for deductions, exemptions etc. It might be a wash with Uncle Sam but, unless each adopts the deduction, one’s state income tax would go up. It ain’t gonna pass anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
I don’t want yet another dang deduction (or false deduction, as the case may be).
I want either a flat tax or a use tax or some way of making this whole mess a lot easier to complete!!! I don’t have my W2s yet (my company is notorious for mailing them on the 31st) so I haven’t started yet, but I honestly HATE doing taxes. HATEITHATEITHATEIT.
I hope that wasn’t too political…
I didn’t really understand it, I hate to admit. I currently am on a spouse’s health plan so I am not paying for health insurance directly. So, does that mean that only she gets a deduction? Not that I think I should but it sounded kind of universal…
weeks, I don’t think anyone really understood it 
. From what I understand, that “deduction” would end up costing more anyways via the fed taxable income used for state taxes, like dwinterfield said
Looks like a shell game to me. The health premiums I pay are already pre-tax, and the employer portion is treated as a non-taxable benefit. Under this plan, the employer portion will be taxable, accompanied by a deduction that may or may not cover the entire amount and may or may not be indexed to increase as health premiums increase. It certainly makes my butt cheeks tighten.
This is a sop to self-employed workers (read this as ‘bidnessmen’) and small-business owners (also read ‘bidnessmen’) who are too cheap to provide health insurance to their employees.
At the risk of turning this into a medical post, I would recommend that anyone who already has insurance see your doctor and get an anal expansion now while you are still covered. That way, if this is passed, it will slide in much easier.
I’m some of the poorest of the poor by US standards, so I’ve been told it won’t affect me at all. But I don’t really follow it that closely. I’ve tried to follow it, but like others I just don’t understand it. 
I really want to be supportive on your 40K day but…
I know I’m leaning toward saying something political and may get spanked but flat taxes and use taxes tend to be regressive, taxing a higher percentage of the earnings of lower and middle income earners to the benefit of higher income earners.
The typical flat tax proposal exempts very low incomes and taxes “earned income and wages” at one rate. The problem is that higher income people tend to get much of their income from sources other than “earned income and wages” such as stock options, dividends etc. These things tend to get better tax treatment than wages.
As for use taxes, they’re based on consumption. Lower and middle income people tend to consume a very percentage of their income and thus most of their income would be taxed. The rich spend tend to consume a lower percentage of their income thus a greater portion of their income would go untaxed.
It sounds like what you really want is tax simplification. That’s a very good thing. My suggestion to address all your issues is to exempt the first $125,000 of all household earnings; index that amount to inflation, and tax all other income at a level that would erase the deficit in 25 years - for the grandkids, so they won’t feel bad about paying our medical bills.
On a personal level, the insurnace proposals that scare me are the ones which make having health insurance mandatory. Such an idea is being looked at right now by our state Governor here in Illinois. I think several other states are looking at similar proposals
To paraphrase Tyler Morris, tax write offs or exemptions don’t do any good if you don’t have the money to pay the premium to start with in the first place.
I think the Illinios proposal even includes penalties for those who don’t get insurance.
Ok - to make it non-political - I’ll go along with that, too.
I really DO just want it all to be less of a hassle (getting more in my paycheck would be great, too).
But I would really be hard pressed to go along with ANY more deductions no matter what the “cause” is.
Simple, simple, simple. That’s all I want.
Whether or not…or how…Bush’s “plan” will affect me is very much an (of course) apolitical mystery. Time will shake the truth out. Always does.
Health-issue sidebar: Cranberry…your avatar makes me crave sunshine!
I see this one kind of like I see bidnessmen complaining about proposals for increasing the minimum wage.
“We can’t afford it. We’ll have to lay people off,” they whine, but in the end, these are service jobs, and they are probably already at the minimum number of employees needed to support the customer base. McDonald’s already knows how many people they need for a given sales volume, and if they cut below that, service will suffer and folks go to BK.
So although management and owners weep and wail and pull at their shirts, in reality, there is nobody to lay off, so they edge their prices up just enough to cover the wage increase, plus a small honorarium for their own pockets, and it’s business as usual. (And don’t tell me that raising the minimum wage will result in jobs going overseas, because if these jobs could have been outsourced to some Indian sweatshop, they would have already. You can’t off-shore toilet cleaning and burger flipping.)
Health insurance will be the same way. Bidness will bitch about it, but it will happen, and there won’t be any layoffs, either. Your Big Mac will cost a bit more, but mandatory health insurance still won’t force jobs off-shore because the jobs that are most at risk for that kind of outsourcing already have health insurance.
The deduction depends on your tax bracket and is really just handing more money to wealthy people. If you get a deduction of $15,000 your refund would only come to $147 which is hardly enough to by any health insurance with. Wealthy people might end up with a refund of around 5 or 6 thousand dollars on the other hand. Like Gonzo said, it’s a “shell game”, but as with all of Bush’s deceptive policies, the wealthy seem to always end up being the real beneficiaries.
Does the coffee at Starbucks cost more because they give their employees health insurance
or am I just gullible?