Baucus: Obama said to be open to taxing health benefits

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to taxing health care benefits, something he campaigned hard against while running for president. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., raised the issue with Obama during a private meeting Tuesday with the president and other Democratic senators and later reported the president's response: "It's on the table. It's an option."

The federal government would reap about $250 billion a year if it treated health care benefits given to employees like wages and taxed them.

Baucus and others are eyeing that money as they search for ways to pay for a costly health care overhaul that would extend coverage to 50 million Americans who are now uninsured. That could cost some $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

The president adamantly opposed health benefit taxes during the campaign, arguing they would undermine job-based coverage. But he's now indicating openness to that suggestion from Congress, even if he criticized Republican presidential rival John McCain for proposing a sweeping version of the same basic idea.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090602/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_overhaul

What a perfectly horrible idea.

between dem and refuck. Don't see no difference. They both support wars now, won't put nazis in prison for torture and they are taking our last dime. fuck them all.

"The president adamantly opposed health benefit taxes during the campaign"...i don't trust baucus

I wish anybody else was in charge of this health redo.

Presidents are known for keeping their silence on sticky issues that they know are going to cause problems. But they are NOT known for letting lawmakers tell lies about things that the President supposedly said. If Baucus is lying, we'll hear about it shortly. If we hear nothing...well, that silence will certainly tell us that Baucus isn't lying.

Why the fuck not? It's no stupider than anything else I'm hearing these days.

:silly:

insurance if such a regime was in place?

...from notorious right wing hack Robert Reich.

People, can't you do a little bit of thinking before you post?

I see a lot of gnashing of teeth, but - - do you have a better idea? If Obama is changing his stance, and favors what the brilliant Reich argues for, then it's because he realized that (a) this is a way to fund the system and (b) having a built0in funding mechanism will probably increase the chances of passage of the legislation.

Kicking some more while we are down - Thanks! May I have another?

Obama has already dissappointed in his healthcare plan. I am going to be really mad if he tops it off with taxing health care benefits. During the campaign, Obama repeatedly criticized John McCain's healthcare plan by pointing out that the benefits would be taxed. He explained that while McCain insisted he wasn't raising taxes he actually was by creating a new way to tax people. He said that he would not tax healthcare benefits.

I have tried to be patient with him on healthcare, but I can't continue to support an already crappy plan that taxes the benefits.

more people are ensured. Another free/cheap lunch for the red states paid foe by the blue states.

So we could be be FORCED to subsidize insurance company CEOs, and pay taxes on what we fork over, all in the name of health CARE?

How absurd.

there is no way Obama will do this..Does this make sense..If they tax health care benefits. The taxpayer turns around and deducts all premium cost ..no way So lets not believe everything these idiots say just to stir up some controversy

to get the Repubs and blue dogs to the negotiating table. I won't hold my breath very long, though...

...that we have now, the one that's broken, where health insurance for most people comes with a job, and only with a job, because of the massive tax break given employers when they provide the insurance.

There will be no single-payer, no National Health Service, no Medicare for All, until this nexus is broken. Taxing health benefits as if they were income would not only break this nexus, it would provide funding for any of those three models at a level of which we can presently only dream.

Ezra Klein, whom many folks here will know from The American Prospect, covers this issue succinctly in Health Reform for Beginners, The Employer Tax Exclusion.

Robert Reich, Clinton's first Secretary of Labor, calls it the only sure way to fund universal health care.

These are not right-wing hacks.