September 12th, 2010 | Author: admin
Gold Plated
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US $479.95
Congress Mulls Tax On 'Gold Plated' Health Plans
Senate Democrats are considering a proposal to place a tax on high-value ‘gold plated’ health insurance plans to help pick up the cost of President Obama’s ambitious health care reform objectives.
Key Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal tax legislation, are working to fine tune an idea by committee member John Kerry (D – MA) that would tax the portion of a health insurance plan over a certain value, likely to be in the region of USD20,000 to USD25,000. The excise tax would be paid by the insurance provider rather than the policy holder, and would probably be set somewhere between 20% and 35%.
It has been suggested that such a tax could raise in the order of USD180bn, although this falls well short of the estimated USD1 trillion overall cost of the health care reforms, which seek to reduce the cost and widen the coverage of health care for working- and middle-class Americans. However, if incorporated into the final health care bill, the insurance tax may mean that controversial plans for a health surtax on the wealthy proposed by House Democrats, which is projected to raise USD544bn over 10 years, could be watered down, bringing fiscally conservative Democrats, and even some moderate Republicans, on side.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has indicated that the proposals will be ready in the near future. But with Congress winding down for its month-long summer recess, they are unlikely to emerge until September at the earliest.
The Kerry plan represents an alternative to capping the amount of employer-provided health plans that can be taken tax-free by the employee. Under current law, employer-provided health insurance is not counted as income for tax purposes and the amount of health care benefits that are counted as tax free is unlimited. Some argue that this tax-free status encourages employers to offer “Cadillac plans,” or overly generous health care plans that promote the overuse of health care services and drive up healthcare costs. Moreover, critics of the current system contend that the plans are subsidized by taxpayers as a result of being tax free.
Capping this exclusion was one of many policy options explored by the Senate Finance Committee in health reform deliberations earlier this year. Other options included restricting tax-free contributions to Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Savings Accounts, clarifying what constitutes a medical expense for tax deduction purposes and eliminating the itemized deduction for medical expenses.
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