As has been trumpeted by some and bemoaned by others for years now, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, mandates, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, that all Americans obtain health insurance or else pay a penalty. This policy is similar to the Massachusetts law passed under former Governor Mitt Romney’s leadership, so the mandate will have little affect on the already-insured state. However, the law also contains a provision set to take effect on the same date which mandates that all employers with 50 or more employees provide health insurance to their full-time workers or else face a $2,000 per employee tax penalty. This mandate is the worst part of the entire Act, as it strengthens the misguided idea of employer-provided health insurance.
Employer-provided insurance is not, and has never been, in itself a good idea. The system is burdensome, inefficient and unnecessarily complicated. Not only does it mean that one must scramble for insurance when changing or in-between jobs, but also that the employee has little to no actual choice as to what coverage he or she receives. The only reason that such a terrible system even exists in the first place was that it is, simply put, an easy form of tax evasion.
Employer-provided health benefits are not taxed, and thus employers have been using them as part of workers’ compensation for a long time now in order to pay a smaller tax bill on the same net compensation for their workers. This tax exemption, a World War II-era relic known as the Healthcare Tax Exemption, accounts for a staggering amount of lost tax revenue – more than $300 billion per year, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation report.
To compare, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the U.S. budget deficit for this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, will be $642 billion , meaning that the Employer Tax Exclusion tax exemption for employers accounts for nearly half of our overall deficit. The CBO reports that the United States’ entire federal spending is about $3.6 trillion for this fiscal year, so the healthcare exclusion is worth just about 10 percent of our entire federal budget.
Not only is the healthcare exemption extremely expensive, but it also affects a startlingly high percentage of the American workforce. More than 60 percent of Americans under the age of 65 have employer-provided health insurance coverage, while only 4 percent purchase it for themselves. A large majority of the population is trapped in these employer-provided plans, as the current tax code strongly incentivizes such policies.
This incentive has no valid purpose. The only argument for its continued existence is that repealing it would disproportionately affect the majority of the population with employer-provided insurance, a situation spawned by this very system. The healthcare exemption’s only purpose is to maintain the system it created, and that is the worst reason for anything to exist.
The Healthcare Tax Exemption perpetuates a woefully inefficient system, under which employers are required to divert valuable resources to managing benefits, employees have no choice or mobility in health coverage, and less tax revenue is collected. This exemption, which only exists to perpetuate the system it created, must be eliminated, not strengthened, as has happened with the Affordable Care Act.
Stefan Herlitz is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
Stefan Herlitz • Sep 3, 2013 at 10:35 pm
Ed,
At the tax rate you chose (26%), income taxes would cause the person making $40,000 with a $10,000 health plan to make $29,600 after tax, plus the plan.
A person making $50,000 without plan would make $37,000, only a total of $2,600 “net” less compensation than the other person, but with the ability to spend their money as they choose.
An employer will offer a generalized, wider plan, while an individual should be able to purchase only the coverage they need, and they will be able to keep this coverage even in the event of unemployment.
Yes, companies can buy things for employees, but that’s compensation, and should be taxed as income. Plus, this exemption disproportionately helps the wealthiest employees while hurting the poorer ones, as they are taxed at higher rates and as such have more to gain by artificially “lowering” their incomes.
This ends up meaning that the middle-and-lower income workers subsidize the healthcare of the richer ones through their taxes- justify that.
Dr. Ed • Sep 3, 2013 at 7:59 pm
Look at it like this:
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I hire you for a job that I am willing to pay $50,000 per year for you to do. I deduct that $50K as a business expense from *my* income taxes — I only pay taxes on the money I earn *above* what it costs me to make it — net, not gross.
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It doesn’t matter to *me* how I pay you that $50K, I’m deducting the whole thing.
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If I give you $50K in cash, you pay your income taxes based on an income of $50K. However, if I give you $40K and buy a $10K health insurance plan for you, your income is only $40K and that is all that you are taxed on. The insurance plan isn’t taxable.
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IT’S THE EMPLOYEE WHO’S GETTING THE TAX BREAK!
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Now if I give you the entire $50K and tell you to buy your own health plan, you will be paying taxes on the whole $50K and thus only have, say $37K after taxes. The plan still costs $10K, but it’s a much higher percentage of $37K than of $50K, which means you have less money left over.
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Money which would have gone to you instead goes to the government in taxes. YOUR money.
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Now Republicans — NON-RINO Republicans — argue that it isn’t fair for some people to have to pay for health expenses in after-tax dollars while others have employer provided insurance plans which pay for it in before-tax dollars and hence the HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS — with all health expenses being paid for with before-tax dollars.
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The issue with WW-II is that there was a wage freeze — that employees were prohibited from raising the pay of employees — and they wanted to do it anyway so as to, essentially, steal workers from other employers.
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If I can’t give you money directly, I can buy things for you — and the employers started buying the health plans because that was legal where giving the employee the actual money was not.
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I’m not even going to get into how the benefits of a state employee (including all UM employees) is about a THIRD of what the actual salary is — essentially paid in addition to the salary. Yes.