Supreme Court Rules 7-2 on Obamacare

[Rigby5]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

And that should be the first step in any reform effort. Making ourselves dependent on "employment" for health care was a mistake.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers ...

Would bring health insurance premiums, and health care prices themselves, back down to earth.

The core problem with health care is that prices are inflated beyond all reason. We've reached a point where the average person can't get average health care without begging someone else (an employer, government, charity) to pay for it. There's no (good) reason for things to be that way. We've made them that way with ill-conceived regulation and tax policy. The first thing need to do is eliminate those regulations and tax policies.

I agree that making ourselves dependent on "employment" for healthcare insurance was a mistake. However, the fallout from reversing the course would create a huge mess and could end with far higher premiums for employees. Employers pay on average 70% of employees healthcare benefits and nearly half of all Americans depend on employers for health insurance.

Correcting a mistake can often be painful. But not as damaging as continuing down the wrong path.

If employers were not allowed to deduct their cost of of providing health insurance from their taxable income, they would drop health insurance as fast as the law allowed.

Yes, that's the point. The law should have never pushed them in that direction in the first place.

Those additional cost would fall on either the employee or the government. The only sure winner would be employers who would save nearly a hundred billion dollars.

That's debatable. If they stopped offering healthcare for employees, they would need to compensate them in other ways. Regardless, it's no reason to continue investing in the wrong solution.

You say if companies stopped subsidizing employee healthcare insurance, they should compensate them in some other way. Why?

Because that's how they compete for quality employees. If you had a choice between two jobs, one that offered healthcare and one that didn't, and the salary was the same, which would you choose? The only way the employer not offering healthcare could compete would be increase their offer to compensate.

The only reason they offer healthcare insurance to their employees today is they have no choice.

Traditionally, they have had that choice, and many made it. I've worked for several companies that didn't offer health care. More recently, asinine regulations have tried force them into it. Another part of the problem, certainly not a solution.

Businesses have never wanted to provide health insurance. In WWII, the government forced it on them. Then unions did. Then state governments and finally the federal government did.

Yep. That's the problem alright. The first thing we need to do is get rid of that kind of legislation.

Actually is was the IRS.
They allowed the companies to not pay taxes on employee benefits like health insurance.
That is like being able to pay employees $1200/month more without having to pay taxes on it.
Which is then another 25% savings.
Employers should never be involved in health care since it makes it harder to change jobs.
It is also unfair to those who do not get employer health care.

{...
Then, in 1943, the Internal Revenue Service decided that employer-based health insurance should be exempt from taxation. This made it cheaper to get health insurance through a job than by other means.
...
One effect of this system is job lock. People become dependent on their employment for their health insurance, and they are loath to leave their jobs, even when doing so might make their lives better. They are afraid that market exchange coverage might not be as good as what they have (and they’re most likely right). They’re afraid if they retire, Medicare won’t be as good (they’re right, too). They’re afraid that if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, they might not be able to find affordable insurance at all.

This system is expensive. The single largest tax expenditure in the United States is for employer-based health insurance. It’s even more than the mortgage interest deduction. In 2017, this exclusion cost the federal government about $260 billion in lost income and payroll taxes. This is significantly more than the cost of the Affordable Care Act each year.

This system is regressive. The tax break for employer-sponsored health insurance is worth more to people making a lot of money than people making little. Let’s take a hypothetical married pediatrician with a couple of children living in Indiana who makes $125,000 (which is below average). Let’s also assume his family insurance plan costs $15,000 (which is below average as well).

The tax break the family would get for insurance is worth over $6,200. That’s far more than a similar-earning family would get in terms of a subsidy on the exchanges. The tax break alone could fund about two people on Medicaid. Moreover, the more one makes, the more one saves at the expense of more spending by the government. The less one makes, the less of a benefit one receives.
...}

The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance (Published 2017)

More an accident of history than anything else, a product of World War II and tax policy, it is the system we seem to be stuck with.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Flopper]

.

So much for those three trump Justices.....

As with all the Trump judicial appointees who threw his frivolous challenges to a safe and secure democratic election out of court, the law has proven a formidable nemesis for the pandemic's "Bolsonaro of the North"

View attachment 503948
"We're going to win. We're going to win so much. We're going to win at trade, we're going to win at the border.
We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning, you're going to come to me
and go 'Please, please, we can't win anymore.' You'll say 'Please, Mr. President, we beg you,
sir, we don't want to win anymore. It's too much. It's not fair to everybody else.'" Trump said.
"And I'm going to say 'I'm sorry, but we're going to keep
winning, winning, winning!"​

Trump is still losing, losing, losing.

Some thought the Cry Baby Sore Loser, despite multiple eminent civil and criminal reckonings, was finally finished losing. Not so. Gazing up at his "big, beautiful wall!" that he made "Mexico!" pay for is only one manifestation of his legacy.

The Former Guy promised that his Supreme Court picks would overturn the Affordable Care Act. He met the court's ruling with the deafening silence of defeat.​

​

View attachment 503947
"THE FORMER STAR OF TRUMP®BLOG" ​

Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, the health insurance program that helped fuel the backlash tea party movement and ultimately his own candidacy. If Trump couldn't get Congress to do away with the law — and he couldn't, even with Republicans in control of both chambers — he vowed to choose Supreme Court justices who would declare Obamacare unconstitutional.​

​

"If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush's appointee John Roberts on Obamacare," Trump tweeted in 2015...​

​

But two of the three jurists Trump picked for the court — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with Roberts as part of a 7-2 majority... It was a major blow — perhaps a decisive one — against the political right's long fight against Obamacare and a sign of the limit of Trump's influence on the justices he appointed.​

​

In the first hours after the ruling, Trump greeted the news with the deafening silence of defeat… most Republicans followed Trump's lead by refusing to give it any extra attention.​

​

There was no promise to renew the fight to repeal the law or to mount another court battle over its constitutionality.​

​

... Republicans aren't at all interested in fighting to take health insurance benefits away from millions of Americans...​

​

In the end, Trump was wrong about the law, the politics of trying to kill the Affordable Care Act — and the assumption that he could control the votes of his Supreme Court picks.​

​

[Analysis: Trump was wrong about the law, Obamacare politics and his judges]​

​

​

​

​

​

​

There is only one way to end Obamacare and that is for congress to create a replacement. Democrats are not going to do it and neither are republicans. A lot has change in last 10 years since Obamacare was passed. American may not like the high cost of Obamacare but certainly like the preventive care, portability, a policy that can't be cancelled by the company, unlimited coverage, and no healthcare requirements. The only thing they don't like is their cost. The Democrat solution is for the government to reduce the cost of premiums and deducible with the government footing the bill. The Republican solution was to have the court end Obamacare and leave the job of replacing it on the democrats.

The problem is the wealthy are benefiting from the current high medical costs, so won't change it.
And the poor who are subsidizing the wealthy, do not have any representation.

So the solution is to end the IRS tax exemption for employers over employee benefits.
That will get employers out of the health insurance business.
Then the wealthy will no longer have free coverage.
So then they will join the poor in wanting a public option.

It's not a tax exemption. The expense of providing health insurance to employees is considered an ordinary business expense like advertising or the cost of goods sold. How much of a tax advantage it is for the employer depends on their their tax bracket and the employer's share of the expense of the insurance premiums. For a low income small single proprietor business it can be a very significant tax break because the person's health insurance becomes a business expense which reduces adjusted gross income which helps in getting addition tax breaks and qualifying for various types of financial aid from both states and the federal government.

You are misunderstanding.
Employee health insurance is NOT at all a valid business expense, in any way.
It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee.
The IRS exemption for employee health insurance benefits has never been fair or along any legal principle.
It is totally contrary all tax laws and should never have been allowed.
What makes it so corrupt is that poor people do not get to take advantage of it, so then when everyone has to have their taxes increased to pay for the shortfall this insurance exemption causes, then effectively poor people end up subsidizing the health care of the wealthy.

The part of the employees healthcare premium paid by the employer, the employer's contributions to 401Ks, and other benefits are deductible expenses from business's taxable income just as any other operating expense such as wages and cost of goods sold.

The portion of the premium paid by the employee can be include as a medical expense on the employee's 1040. It may or may not be a deductible depending on the employee's total medical expenses.

I don't understand why you don't consider the cost of providing employee benefits a business expense.

 

[Flopper]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

And that should be the first step in any reform effort. Making ourselves dependent on "employment" for health care was a mistake.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers ...

Would bring health insurance premiums, and health care prices themselves, back down to earth.

The core problem with health care is that prices are inflated beyond all reason. We've reached a point where the average person can't get average health care without begging someone else (an employer, government, charity) to pay for it. There's no (good) reason for things to be that way. We've made them that way with ill-conceived regulation and tax policy. The first thing need to do is eliminate those regulations and tax policies.

I agree that making ourselves dependent on "employment" for healthcare insurance was a mistake. However, the fallout from reversing the course would create a huge mess and could end with far higher premiums for employees. Employers pay on average 70% of employees healthcare benefits and nearly half of all Americans depend on employers for health insurance.

Correcting a mistake can often be painful. But not as damaging as continuing down the wrong path.

If employers were not allowed to deduct their cost of of providing health insurance from their taxable income, they would drop health insurance as fast as the law allowed.

Yes, that's the point. The law should have never pushed them in that direction in the first place.

Those additional cost would fall on either the employee or the government. The only sure winner would be employers who would save nearly a hundred billion dollars.

That's debatable. If they stopped offering healthcare for employees, they would need to compensate them in other ways. Regardless, it's no reason to continue investing in the wrong solution.

You say if companies stopped subsidizing employee healthcare insurance, they should compensate them in some other way. Why?

Because that's how they compete for quality employees. If you had a choice between two jobs, one that offered healthcare and one that didn't, and the salary was the same, which would you choose? The only way the employer not offering healthcare could compete would be increase their offer to compensate.

The only reason they offer healthcare insurance to their employees today is they have no choice.

Traditionally, they have had that choice, and many made it. I've worked for several companies that didn't offer health care. More recently, asinine regulations have tried force them into it. Another part of the problem, certainly not a solution.

Businesses have never wanted to provide health insurance. In WWII, the government forced it on them. Then unions did. Then state governments and finally the federal government did.

Yep. That's the problem alright. The first thing we need to do is get rid of that kind of legislation.

Actually is was the IRS.
They allowed the companies to not pay taxes on employee benefits like health insurance.
That is like being able to pay employees $1200/month more without having to pay taxes on it.
Which is then another 25% savings.
Employers should never be involved in health care since it makes it harder to change jobs.
It is also unfair to those who do not get employer health care.

{...
Then, in 1943, the Internal Revenue Service decided that employer-based health insurance should be exempt from taxation. This made it cheaper to get health insurance through a job than by other means.
...
One effect of this system is job lock. People become dependent on their employment for their health insurance, and they are loath to leave their jobs, even when doing so might make their lives better. They are afraid that market exchange coverage might not be as good as what they have (and they’re most likely right). They’re afraid if they retire, Medicare won’t be as good (they’re right, too). They’re afraid that if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, they might not be able to find affordable insurance at all.

This system is expensive. The single largest tax expenditure in the United States is for employer-based health insurance. It’s even more than the mortgage interest deduction. In 2017, this exclusion cost the federal government about $260 billion in lost income and payroll taxes. This is significantly more than the cost of the Affordable Care Act each year.

This system is regressive. The tax break for employer-sponsored health insurance is worth more to people making a lot of money than people making little. Let’s take a hypothetical married pediatrician with a couple of children living in Indiana who makes $125,000 (which is below average). Let’s also assume his family insurance plan costs $15,000 (which is below average as well).

The tax break the family would get for insurance is worth over $6,200. That’s far more than a similar-earning family would get in terms of a subsidy on the exchanges. The tax break alone could fund about two people on Medicaid. Moreover, the more one makes, the more one saves at the expense of more spending by the government. The less one makes, the less of a benefit one receives.
...}

The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance (Published 2017)

More an accident of history than anything else, a product of World War II and tax policy, it is the system we seem to be stuck with.

www.nytimes.com

Both wages and employer contributions to employee benefits are considered to be a cost of doing business, and therefore it is considered a business expense and is deductible. I don't see how the IRS could rule otherwise because however the employer compensates his employees for labor, wages, commissions, bonuses, or other benefits they would have to be considered a business expense. Had the government not recognize employee benefits as a cost of doing business, there would be no employee benefits.

 

[schmidlap]

Over 80 judges considered the evidence, and dismissed the fantasy. That resulted in Trump goons exhibiting their contempt for evidence:

Along with their contempt for the rule of law, the Constitution, and our democratic institutions.

That the most fervent of Trump cultists would blatantly lie about the identity of the Trump goons even as hundreds of Trump goons were being identified, apprehended, and prosecuted, with all the graphic footage of the Trump goons' violence and first-person testimony to Trump goon violence, or insist that they were merely conducting themselves like typical tourists despite confessions by Trump goons to the contrary, confirms that decent, reality-acknowledging Americans are being confronted by a fanaticism that is impervious to both overwhelming evidence and rational discourse.

 

[schmidlap]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

 

[Rigby5]

.

So much for those three trump Justices.....

As with all the Trump judicial appointees who threw his frivolous challenges to a safe and secure democratic election out of court, the law has proven a formidable nemesis for the pandemic's "Bolsonaro of the North"

View attachment 503948
"We're going to win. We're going to win so much. We're going to win at trade, we're going to win at the border.
We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning, you're going to come to me
and go 'Please, please, we can't win anymore.' You'll say 'Please, Mr. President, we beg you,
sir, we don't want to win anymore. It's too much. It's not fair to everybody else.'" Trump said.
"And I'm going to say 'I'm sorry, but we're going to keep
winning, winning, winning!"​

Trump is still losing, losing, losing.

Some thought the Cry Baby Sore Loser, despite multiple eminent civil and criminal reckonings, was finally finished losing. Not so. Gazing up at his "big, beautiful wall!" that he made "Mexico!" pay for is only one manifestation of his legacy.

The Former Guy promised that his Supreme Court picks would overturn the Affordable Care Act. He met the court's ruling with the deafening silence of defeat.​

​

View attachment 503947
"THE FORMER STAR OF TRUMP®BLOG" ​

Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, the health insurance program that helped fuel the backlash tea party movement and ultimately his own candidacy. If Trump couldn't get Congress to do away with the law — and he couldn't, even with Republicans in control of both chambers — he vowed to choose Supreme Court justices who would declare Obamacare unconstitutional.​

​

"If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush's appointee John Roberts on Obamacare," Trump tweeted in 2015...​

​

But two of the three jurists Trump picked for the court — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with Roberts as part of a 7-2 majority... It was a major blow — perhaps a decisive one — against the political right's long fight against Obamacare and a sign of the limit of Trump's influence on the justices he appointed.​

​

In the first hours after the ruling, Trump greeted the news with the deafening silence of defeat… most Republicans followed Trump's lead by refusing to give it any extra attention.​

​

There was no promise to renew the fight to repeal the law or to mount another court battle over its constitutionality.​

​

... Republicans aren't at all interested in fighting to take health insurance benefits away from millions of Americans...​

​

In the end, Trump was wrong about the law, the politics of trying to kill the Affordable Care Act — and the assumption that he could control the votes of his Supreme Court picks.​

​

[Analysis: Trump was wrong about the law, Obamacare politics and his judges]​

​

​

​

​

​

​

There is only one way to end Obamacare and that is for congress to create a replacement. Democrats are not going to do it and neither are republicans. A lot has change in last 10 years since Obamacare was passed. American may not like the high cost of Obamacare but certainly like the preventive care, portability, a policy that can't be cancelled by the company, unlimited coverage, and no healthcare requirements. The only thing they don't like is their cost. The Democrat solution is for the government to reduce the cost of premiums and deducible with the government footing the bill. The Republican solution was to have the court end Obamacare and leave the job of replacing it on the democrats.

The problem is the wealthy are benefiting from the current high medical costs, so won't change it.
And the poor who are subsidizing the wealthy, do not have any representation.

So the solution is to end the IRS tax exemption for employers over employee benefits.
That will get employers out of the health insurance business.
Then the wealthy will no longer have free coverage.
So then they will join the poor in wanting a public option.

It's not a tax exemption. The expense of providing health insurance to employees is considered an ordinary business expense like advertising or the cost of goods sold. How much of a tax advantage it is for the employer depends on their their tax bracket and the employer's share of the expense of the insurance premiums. For a low income small single proprietor business it can be a very significant tax break because the person's health insurance becomes a business expense which reduces adjusted gross income which helps in getting addition tax breaks and qualifying for various types of financial aid from both states and the federal government.

You are misunderstanding.
Employee health insurance is NOT at all a valid business expense, in any way.
It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee.
The IRS exemption for employee health insurance benefits has never been fair or along any legal principle.
It is totally contrary all tax laws and should never have been allowed.
What makes it so corrupt is that poor people do not get to take advantage of it, so then when everyone has to have their taxes increased to pay for the shortfall this insurance exemption causes, then effectively poor people end up subsidizing the health care of the wealthy.

The part of the employees healthcare premium paid by the employer, the employer's contributions to 401Ks, and other benefits are deductible expenses from business's taxable income just as any other operating expense such as wages and cost of goods sold.

The portion of the premium paid by the employee can be include as a medical expense on the employee's 1040. It may or may not be a deductible depending on the employee's total medical expenses.

I don't understand why you don't consider the cost of providing employee benefits a business expense.

That is the point, that all other employee benefits are identical to wages and therefore should be taxed.
Health insurance for employees is a benefit to the employee, and should then be taxed.
401k contributions also are taxed, but the taxes are just deferred.
No employee benefit is ever supposed to be untaxed.

Whether the employee can deduct health insurance costs is an entirely different matter, and depends on if they itemize, and it’s limited to the total amount of your overall costs that exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income.

You are not reading what I wrote.
I said, "It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee."
I am not saying the employer should be paying taxes on it, but that the employee should.
All employee benefits should be listed on the W-2 and taxable to the employee.

To not tax health insurance would be like allowing employees to pay no income tax at all if the employer compensates then through free housing, free food, etc., instead of wages. Food and housing are just as valid of a cost of doing business for the employee as health care is.

 

[Flopper]

.

So much for those three trump Justices.....

As with all the Trump judicial appointees who threw his frivolous challenges to a safe and secure democratic election out of court, the law has proven a formidable nemesis for the pandemic's "Bolsonaro of the North"

View attachment 503948
"We're going to win. We're going to win so much. We're going to win at trade, we're going to win at the border.
We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning, you're going to come to me
and go 'Please, please, we can't win anymore.' You'll say 'Please, Mr. President, we beg you,
sir, we don't want to win anymore. It's too much. It's not fair to everybody else.'" Trump said.
"And I'm going to say 'I'm sorry, but we're going to keep
winning, winning, winning!"​

Trump is still losing, losing, losing.

Some thought the Cry Baby Sore Loser, despite multiple eminent civil and criminal reckonings, was finally finished losing. Not so. Gazing up at his "big, beautiful wall!" that he made "Mexico!" pay for is only one manifestation of his legacy.

The Former Guy promised that his Supreme Court picks would overturn the Affordable Care Act. He met the court's ruling with the deafening silence of defeat.​

​

View attachment 503947
"THE FORMER STAR OF TRUMP®BLOG" ​

Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, the health insurance program that helped fuel the backlash tea party movement and ultimately his own candidacy. If Trump couldn't get Congress to do away with the law — and he couldn't, even with Republicans in control of both chambers — he vowed to choose Supreme Court justices who would declare Obamacare unconstitutional.​

​

"If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush's appointee John Roberts on Obamacare," Trump tweeted in 2015...​

​

But two of the three jurists Trump picked for the court — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with Roberts as part of a 7-2 majority... It was a major blow — perhaps a decisive one — against the political right's long fight against Obamacare and a sign of the limit of Trump's influence on the justices he appointed.​

​

In the first hours after the ruling, Trump greeted the news with the deafening silence of defeat… most Republicans followed Trump's lead by refusing to give it any extra attention.​

​

There was no promise to renew the fight to repeal the law or to mount another court battle over its constitutionality.​

​

... Republicans aren't at all interested in fighting to take health insurance benefits away from millions of Americans...​

​

In the end, Trump was wrong about the law, the politics of trying to kill the Affordable Care Act — and the assumption that he could control the votes of his Supreme Court picks.​

​

[Analysis: Trump was wrong about the law, Obamacare politics and his judges]​

​

​

​

​

​

​

There is only one way to end Obamacare and that is for congress to create a replacement. Democrats are not going to do it and neither are republicans. A lot has change in last 10 years since Obamacare was passed. American may not like the high cost of Obamacare but certainly like the preventive care, portability, a policy that can't be cancelled by the company, unlimited coverage, and no healthcare requirements. The only thing they don't like is their cost. The Democrat solution is for the government to reduce the cost of premiums and deducible with the government footing the bill. The Republican solution was to have the court end Obamacare and leave the job of replacing it on the democrats.

The problem is the wealthy are benefiting from the current high medical costs, so won't change it.
And the poor who are subsidizing the wealthy, do not have any representation.

So the solution is to end the IRS tax exemption for employers over employee benefits.
That will get employers out of the health insurance business.
Then the wealthy will no longer have free coverage.
So then they will join the poor in wanting a public option.

It's not a tax exemption. The expense of providing health insurance to employees is considered an ordinary business expense like advertising or the cost of goods sold. How much of a tax advantage it is for the employer depends on their their tax bracket and the employer's share of the expense of the insurance premiums. For a low income small single proprietor business it can be a very significant tax break because the person's health insurance becomes a business expense which reduces adjusted gross income which helps in getting addition tax breaks and qualifying for various types of financial aid from both states and the federal government.

You are misunderstanding.
Employee health insurance is NOT at all a valid business expense, in any way.
It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee.
The IRS exemption for employee health insurance benefits has never been fair or along any legal principle.
It is totally contrary all tax laws and should never have been allowed.
What makes it so corrupt is that poor people do not get to take advantage of it, so then when everyone has to have their taxes increased to pay for the shortfall this insurance exemption causes, then effectively poor people end up subsidizing the health care of the wealthy.

The part of the employees healthcare premium paid by the employer, the employer's contributions to 401Ks, and other benefits are deductible expenses from business's taxable income just as any other operating expense such as wages and cost of goods sold.

The portion of the premium paid by the employee can be include as a medical expense on the employee's 1040. It may or may not be a deductible depending on the employee's total medical expenses.

I don't understand why you don't consider the cost of providing employee benefits a business expense.

That is the point, that all other employee benefits are identical to wages and therefore should be taxed.
Health insurance for employees is a benefit to the employee, and should then be taxed.
401k contributions also are taxed, but the taxes are just deferred.
No employee benefit is ever supposed to be untaxed.

Whether the employee can deduct health insurance costs is an entirely different matter, and depends on if they itemize, and it’s limited to the total amount of your overall costs that exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income.

You are not reading what I wrote.
I said, "It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee."
I am not saying the employer should be paying taxes on it, but that the employee should.
All employee benefits should be listed on the W-2 and taxable to the employee.

To not tax health insurance would be like allowing employees to pay no income tax at all if the employer compensates then through free housing, free food, etc., instead of wages. Food and housing are just as valid of a cost of doing business for the employee as health care is.

Ok, I think I understand your position. You want to tax employee health insurance benefits that are currently not being tax to make employer provided health insurance less attractive.. Is that correct?

 

[Flopper]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

Health insurance paid by the employer is just one of many employee benefits that are either only partially taxed or not taxed at all. Most of these benefits came about at different times for different reasons. Often the reason for exempting the benefit from taxes has disappeared but the tax policy remains the same. Today, tax breaks for employees with employee health insurance helps reduce the number of uninsured, which is heavily supported by democrats and begrudgingly support by republicans. Thus it's not likely to change.

 

[dblack]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

Health insurance paid by the employer is just one of many employee benefits that are either only partially taxed or not taxed at all. Most of these benefits came about at different times for different reasons. Often the reason for exempting the benefit from taxes has disappeared but the tax policy remains the same. Today, tax breaks for employees with employee health insurance helps reduce the number of uninsured, which is heavily supported by democrats and begrudgingly support by republicans. Thus it's not likely to change.

It may not be likely, but it's necessary.

It also points out the broader problem of government using tax incentives as a means of manipulating society. But that deserves a thread of its own.

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

Who were the 2 morons? Oh. Gorsuch and Alito.

So people are morons for having a disparate opinion now?

 

[dblack]

.

So much for those three trump Justices.....

As with all the Trump judicial appointees who threw his frivolous challenges to a safe and secure democratic election out of court, the law has proven a formidable nemesis for the pandemic's "Bolsonaro of the North"

View attachment 503948
"We're going to win. We're going to win so much. We're going to win at trade, we're going to win at the border.
We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning, you're going to come to me
and go 'Please, please, we can't win anymore.' You'll say 'Please, Mr. President, we beg you,
sir, we don't want to win anymore. It's too much. It's not fair to everybody else.'" Trump said.
"And I'm going to say 'I'm sorry, but we're going to keep
winning, winning, winning!"​

Trump is still losing, losing, losing.

Some thought the Cry Baby Sore Loser, despite multiple eminent civil and criminal reckonings, was finally finished losing. Not so. Gazing up at his "big, beautiful wall!" that he made "Mexico!" pay for is only one manifestation of his legacy.

The Former Guy promised that his Supreme Court picks would overturn the Affordable Care Act. He met the court's ruling with the deafening silence of defeat.​

​

View attachment 503947
"THE FORMER STAR OF TRUMP®BLOG" ​

Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, the health insurance program that helped fuel the backlash tea party movement and ultimately his own candidacy. If Trump couldn't get Congress to do away with the law — and he couldn't, even with Republicans in control of both chambers — he vowed to choose Supreme Court justices who would declare Obamacare unconstitutional.​

​

"If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush's appointee John Roberts on Obamacare," Trump tweeted in 2015...​

​

But two of the three jurists Trump picked for the court — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with Roberts as part of a 7-2 majority... It was a major blow — perhaps a decisive one — against the political right's long fight against Obamacare and a sign of the limit of Trump's influence on the justices he appointed.​

​

In the first hours after the ruling, Trump greeted the news with the deafening silence of defeat… most Republicans followed Trump's lead by refusing to give it any extra attention.​

​

There was no promise to renew the fight to repeal the law or to mount another court battle over its constitutionality.​

​

... Republicans aren't at all interested in fighting to take health insurance benefits away from millions of Americans...​

​

In the end, Trump was wrong about the law, the politics of trying to kill the Affordable Care Act — and the assumption that he could control the votes of his Supreme Court picks.​

​

[Analysis: Trump was wrong about the law, Obamacare politics and his judges]​

​

​

​

​

​

​

There is only one way to end Obamacare and that is for congress to create a replacement. Democrats are not going to do it and neither are republicans. A lot has change in last 10 years since Obamacare was passed. American may not like the high cost of Obamacare but certainly like the preventive care, portability, a policy that can't be cancelled by the company, unlimited coverage, and no healthcare requirements. The only thing they don't like is their cost. The Democrat solution is for the government to reduce the cost of premiums and deducible with the government footing the bill. The Republican solution was to have the court end Obamacare and leave the job of replacing it on the democrats.

The problem is the wealthy are benefiting from the current high medical costs, so won't change it.
And the poor who are subsidizing the wealthy, do not have any representation.

So the solution is to end the IRS tax exemption for employers over employee benefits.
That will get employers out of the health insurance business.
Then the wealthy will no longer have free coverage.
So then they will join the poor in wanting a public option.

It's not a tax exemption. The expense of providing health insurance to employees is considered an ordinary business expense like advertising or the cost of goods sold. How much of a tax advantage it is for the employer depends on their their tax bracket and the employer's share of the expense of the insurance premiums. For a low income small single proprietor business it can be a very significant tax break because the person's health insurance becomes a business expense which reduces adjusted gross income which helps in getting addition tax breaks and qualifying for various types of financial aid from both states and the federal government.

You are misunderstanding.
Employee health insurance is NOT at all a valid business expense, in any way.
It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee.
The IRS exemption for employee health insurance benefits has never been fair or along any legal principle.
It is totally contrary all tax laws and should never have been allowed.
What makes it so corrupt is that poor people do not get to take advantage of it, so then when everyone has to have their taxes increased to pay for the shortfall this insurance exemption causes, then effectively poor people end up subsidizing the health care of the wealthy.

The part of the employees healthcare premium paid by the employer, the employer's contributions to 401Ks, and other benefits are deductible expenses from business's taxable income just as any other operating expense such as wages and cost of goods sold.

The portion of the premium paid by the employee can be include as a medical expense on the employee's 1040. It may or may not be a deductible depending on the employee's total medical expenses.

I don't understand why you don't consider the cost of providing employee benefits a business expense.

That is the point, that all other employee benefits are identical to wages and therefore should be taxed.
Health insurance for employees is a benefit to the employee, and should then be taxed.
401k contributions also are taxed, but the taxes are just deferred.
No employee benefit is ever supposed to be untaxed.

Whether the employee can deduct health insurance costs is an entirely different matter, and depends on if they itemize, and it’s limited to the total amount of your overall costs that exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income.

You are not reading what I wrote.
I said, "It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee."
I am not saying the employer should be paying taxes on it, but that the employee should.
All employee benefits should be listed on the W-2 and taxable to the employee.

To not tax health insurance would be like allowing employees to pay no income tax at all if the employer compensates then through free housing, free food, etc., instead of wages. Food and housing are just as valid of a cost of doing business for the employee as health care is.

Ok, I think I understand your position. You want to tax employee health insurance benefits that are currently not being tax to make employer provided health insurance less attractive.. Is that correct?

It would make providing health insurance as "attractive" as it actually is, without artificial enticement. Some companies, and some employees, might prefer to stay with the current approach. But the current approach is clearly causing problems, and the tax incentives only serve to keep us mired in those problems.

 

[schmidlap]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

Health insurance paid by the employer is just one of many employee benefits that are either only partially taxed or not taxed at all. Most of these benefits came about at different times for different reasons. Often the reason for exempting the benefit from taxes has disappeared but the tax policy remains the same. Today, tax breaks for employees with employee health insurance helps reduce the number of uninsured, which is heavily supported by democrats and begrudgingly support by republicans. Thus it's not likely to change.

There is no special relationship between employment and the potential need for healthcare, nor any need for each employer who provides group health insurance to duplicate the administrative functions of all others. Such a senseless, inefficiant association contributes to the cost for healthcare in the U.S. being nearly twice that of all advanced democratic nations. Free private enterprise from bearing the onus, and eliminate that unnecessary administrative expense.

 

[citygator]

So people are morons for having a disparate opinion now?

Good point. Bar is pretty low for morons these days. Even telling a nation to inject disinfectant and shining a light up their butts passes for wisdom now a days so I guess bad opinions doesn’t make you a moron either.

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

So people are morons for having a disparate opinion now?

Good point. Bar is pretty low for morons these days. Even telling a nation to inject disinfectant and shining a light up their butts passes for wisdom now a days so I guess bad opinions doesn’t make you a moron either.

Never said that. So I guess we know who the moron really is? You!

 

[theHawk]

people with obamacare that come down with severe illness still end up in bankruptcy court....

Hey now! Reality isn’t important, just that we can say “they have health insurance”.

 

[Flopper]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

Health insurance paid by the employer is just one of many employee benefits that are either only partially taxed or not taxed at all. Most of these benefits came about at different times for different reasons. Often the reason for exempting the benefit from taxes has disappeared but the tax policy remains the same. Today, tax breaks for employees with employee health insurance helps reduce the number of uninsured, which is heavily supported by democrats and begrudgingly support by republicans. Thus it's not likely to change.

It may not be likely, but it's necessary.

It also points out the broader problem of government using tax incentives as a means of manipulating society. But that deserves a thread of its own.

The pollical party in power in the US has always used the tax policy as means to accomplish it's goals. In fact, just about all government everywhere does the same. I doubt that will ever change

 

[dblack]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

Health insurance paid by the employer is just one of many employee benefits that are either only partially taxed or not taxed at all. Most of these benefits came about at different times for different reasons. Often the reason for exempting the benefit from taxes has disappeared but the tax policy remains the same. Today, tax breaks for employees with employee health insurance helps reduce the number of uninsured, which is heavily supported by democrats and begrudgingly support by republicans. Thus it's not likely to change.

It may not be likely, but it's necessary.

It also points out the broader problem of government using tax incentives as a means of manipulating society. But that deserves a thread of its own.

The pollical party in power in the US has always used the tax policy as means to accomplish it's goals. In fact, just about all government everywhere does the same. I doubt that will ever change

Doubt all you want. It's egregious abuse of government that basically does an end run around constitutional restrictions on state power. Getting rid of it will be an important step toward better government.

 

[Flopper]

I would argue against eliminating health insurance as business expense for several reasons:

Providing healthcare insurance is a business operating expense, just like all other government required expenses and should remain deductible. If employers could not deduct the cost of providing healthcare insurance they would either eliminate their contribution to the employees healthcare plan or they would drop health insurance all to together.

Forcing millions of people to buy their health insurance without the financial support of employers which is typically 50% and without a negotiated employer contract or group contract would make insurance much more expensive for employees. The only way to lower the premiums would be goverment subsidies. This would in effect transfer the employers cost to the goverment.

The fact is employers would love to get rid the burden of providing health insurance because the heath insurance expense is just a a deduction from revenue for most businesses, not at tax credit. Only very small employers can claim a tax credit which is limited to 50% of the premium. What this means is employers would have greater profits without having to provide health insurance.

During the war [WWII], wages were capped by the federal government, so employers needed another means to entice and keep employees. The incentive they decided on were benefits like health insurance. These health benefits packages were not considered a part of employees’ wages and the employers could deduct what they spent on these benefits packages from their corporate taxes. A win-win situation!​

[When did employer-sponsored health insurance begin? | Health Insurance]​

There are reasons that what had begun as an employment perquisite of little value - an employer picking up the then negligible tab for an employee's medical insurance - has grown to become a monumentally expensive and inefficient method of covering Americans.

There is nothing unique about Americans employed by businesses administering health insurance plans needing health insurance. All Americans are subject to the risk of incurring medical expenses, sometimes ruinously high. There is no rationale for subjecting Americans who are between jobs, for whatever reason, to the potential of devastating loss if a family member should incur substantial medical expenses during such an hiatus.

The need for businesses to divert a portion of their operations to administer such plans is only one unnecessary imposition. The expectancy of an American to have his health insurance provided by an employer is a barrier to enterprise, one more impediment to potential start-ups, and an incentive to remain with a company out of fear of losing coverage rather than progressing in one's career. It was a coercive measure calculated to keep employees in their place during wartime.

Differentiating Americans working for companies who administer healthcare plans from other Americans is counter to the economic advantage of economy of scale, administrative functions assumed by the employer being repeatedly duplicated by every employer rather than all Americans, employed or otherwise, being under a single plan that minimizes the bureaucratic requirements and most efficiently distributes risk as it creates the largest risk pool, an actuarial reality.

The federal and state tax systems provide significant financial benefits for people with private health insurance. The largest group of beneficiaries is people who enroll in coverage through their jobs. There also are tax benefits for people who are self-employed and for people with high medical costs...​

The largest tax subsidy for private health insurance — the exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer and employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) – was estimated to cost approximately $250 billion in lost federal tax revenue in 2013... the largest tax incentive for private insurance — the exclusion of the cost of ESI — is an indirect subsidy that is never actually reported to the individuals and families who benefit from it. Many people with employer coverage are probably not aware that the federal and state tax exclusions for private health insurance provides them with a subsidy worth several thousands of dollars a year.​

​

Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance

This brief describes the different forms of tax assistance for private health insurance, including subsidies offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces and benefits for people who…

www.kff.org

​

​

No competent individuals designing a nation's healthcare system would have ever attached coverage to the plethora of private employers. It was an unforeseeable, insidious development.

During and before WWII, health insurance was essentially hospitalization and in many cases only paying for the most costly procedures. Everything else was the subscribers responsibility.

The cost of healthcare over the last 75 years has increased as much as 40 times; that is, a $100 procedure then would cost about $4,000 today. When people see figures like this, the usual first question is what is the cause. We have heard the answers many times, goverment, greedy insurance companies, Obamacare, overpaid healthcare workers, big government, drug companies, etc. What you don't hear is people are utilizing healthcare 5 times as much as they did in1950. The number of medical treatments have tripled since 1960. You might like paying $5 to go to the doctor 75 years ago, but you wouldn't like hearing him tell you that there was no cure for your lung cancer or your heart disease, or your son has polio and he will probably spend the rest of his life in an iron lung, etc. etc.

In large part due to better healthcare, life expectancy has increased from 65 in 1950 to 79 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 89 by 2070. Today 11 times as many people are living to 100 compared to 1950. When looking at the increase in healthcare cost we need to ask our selves how important is living a longer and healthier life.

Had it not begun as a perquisite to encourage employees to remain in their jobs during wartime, an incidental incentive from which it metastasized, no one designing the nation's ideal healthcare system would have conflated coverage with employment. Employment is irrelevant to every American's risk of incurring significant medical expenses.

Health insurance paid by the employer is just one of many employee benefits that are either only partially taxed or not taxed at all. Most of these benefits came about at different times for different reasons. Often the reason for exempting the benefit from taxes has disappeared but the tax policy remains the same. Today, tax breaks for employees with employee health insurance helps reduce the number of uninsured, which is heavily supported by democrats and begrudgingly support by republicans. Thus it's not likely to change.

There is no special relationship between employment and the potential need for healthcare, nor any need for each employer who provides group health insurance to duplicate the administrative functions of all others. Such a senseless, inefficiant association contributes to the cost for healthcare in the U.S. being nearly twice that of all advanced democratic nations. Free private enterprise from bearing the onus, and eliminate that unnecessary administrative expense.

There is no special relationship between and the potential need for employee retirement plans, life insurance, dental insurance, disability insurance or heath insurance other than to help companies compete for the best employees and keeping them.

With or without tax breaks, employees would still take advantage of these benefits because the purchasing power and negotiating power of businesses is almost always better than the individual. Eliminating employee tax advantaged benefits would impact the highest paid employees far more than the majority of employees whose tax rates are much lower and their need is generally higher.

 

[dblack]

Eliminating employee tax advantaged benefits would impact the highest paid employees far more than the majority of employees whose tax rates are much lower and their need is generally higher.

Yes, I think someone in this thread already pointed out the regressive nature of the tax incentive.

 

[Rigby5]

.

So much for those three trump Justices.....

As with all the Trump judicial appointees who threw his frivolous challenges to a safe and secure democratic election out of court, the law has proven a formidable nemesis for the pandemic's "Bolsonaro of the North"

View attachment 503948
"We're going to win. We're going to win so much. We're going to win at trade, we're going to win at the border.
We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning, you're going to come to me
and go 'Please, please, we can't win anymore.' You'll say 'Please, Mr. President, we beg you,
sir, we don't want to win anymore. It's too much. It's not fair to everybody else.'" Trump said.
"And I'm going to say 'I'm sorry, but we're going to keep
winning, winning, winning!"​

Trump is still losing, losing, losing.

Some thought the Cry Baby Sore Loser, despite multiple eminent civil and criminal reckonings, was finally finished losing. Not so. Gazing up at his "big, beautiful wall!" that he made "Mexico!" pay for is only one manifestation of his legacy.

The Former Guy promised that his Supreme Court picks would overturn the Affordable Care Act. He met the court's ruling with the deafening silence of defeat.​

​

View attachment 503947
"THE FORMER STAR OF TRUMP®BLOG" ​

Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, the health insurance program that helped fuel the backlash tea party movement and ultimately his own candidacy. If Trump couldn't get Congress to do away with the law — and he couldn't, even with Republicans in control of both chambers — he vowed to choose Supreme Court justices who would declare Obamacare unconstitutional.​

​

"If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush's appointee John Roberts on Obamacare," Trump tweeted in 2015...​

​

But two of the three jurists Trump picked for the court — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with Roberts as part of a 7-2 majority... It was a major blow — perhaps a decisive one — against the political right's long fight against Obamacare and a sign of the limit of Trump's influence on the justices he appointed.​

​

In the first hours after the ruling, Trump greeted the news with the deafening silence of defeat… most Republicans followed Trump's lead by refusing to give it any extra attention.​

​

There was no promise to renew the fight to repeal the law or to mount another court battle over its constitutionality.​

​

... Republicans aren't at all interested in fighting to take health insurance benefits away from millions of Americans...​

​

In the end, Trump was wrong about the law, the politics of trying to kill the Affordable Care Act — and the assumption that he could control the votes of his Supreme Court picks.​

​

[Analysis: Trump was wrong about the law, Obamacare politics and his judges]​

​

​

​

​

​

​

There is only one way to end Obamacare and that is for congress to create a replacement. Democrats are not going to do it and neither are republicans. A lot has change in last 10 years since Obamacare was passed. American may not like the high cost of Obamacare but certainly like the preventive care, portability, a policy that can't be cancelled by the company, unlimited coverage, and no healthcare requirements. The only thing they don't like is their cost. The Democrat solution is for the government to reduce the cost of premiums and deducible with the government footing the bill. The Republican solution was to have the court end Obamacare and leave the job of replacing it on the democrats.

The problem is the wealthy are benefiting from the current high medical costs, so won't change it.
And the poor who are subsidizing the wealthy, do not have any representation.

So the solution is to end the IRS tax exemption for employers over employee benefits.
That will get employers out of the health insurance business.
Then the wealthy will no longer have free coverage.
So then they will join the poor in wanting a public option.

It's not a tax exemption. The expense of providing health insurance to employees is considered an ordinary business expense like advertising or the cost of goods sold. How much of a tax advantage it is for the employer depends on their their tax bracket and the employer's share of the expense of the insurance premiums. For a low income small single proprietor business it can be a very significant tax break because the person's health insurance becomes a business expense which reduces adjusted gross income which helps in getting addition tax breaks and qualifying for various types of financial aid from both states and the federal government.

You are misunderstanding.
Employee health insurance is NOT at all a valid business expense, in any way.
It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee.
The IRS exemption for employee health insurance benefits has never been fair or along any legal principle.
It is totally contrary all tax laws and should never have been allowed.
What makes it so corrupt is that poor people do not get to take advantage of it, so then when everyone has to have their taxes increased to pay for the shortfall this insurance exemption causes, then effectively poor people end up subsidizing the health care of the wealthy.

The part of the employees healthcare premium paid by the employer, the employer's contributions to 401Ks, and other benefits are deductible expenses from business's taxable income just as any other operating expense such as wages and cost of goods sold.

The portion of the premium paid by the employee can be include as a medical expense on the employee's 1040. It may or may not be a deductible depending on the employee's total medical expenses.

I don't understand why you don't consider the cost of providing employee benefits a business expense.

That is the point, that all other employee benefits are identical to wages and therefore should be taxed.
Health insurance for employees is a benefit to the employee, and should then be taxed.
401k contributions also are taxed, but the taxes are just deferred.
No employee benefit is ever supposed to be untaxed.

Whether the employee can deduct health insurance costs is an entirely different matter, and depends on if they itemize, and it’s limited to the total amount of your overall costs that exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income.

You are not reading what I wrote.
I said, "It is entirely an employee benefit, and as such, should be taxable to the employee."
I am not saying the employer should be paying taxes on it, but that the employee should.
All employee benefits should be listed on the W-2 and taxable to the employee.

To not tax health insurance would be like allowing employees to pay no income tax at all if the employer compensates then through free housing, free food, etc., instead of wages. Food and housing are just as valid of a cost of doing business for the employee as health care is.

Ok, I think I understand your position. You want to tax employee health insurance benefits that are currently not being tax to make employer provided health insurance less attractive.. Is that correct?

Yes, but the point is not just that I want to make employer provided health insurance benefits less attractive, but that they were always wrong to be tax free.
Not only should all benefits be taxed, but since the poor do not get these health insurance benefits, it is extremely regressive to give them only to the wealthy.