Subject: consideration of taxing health benefits to the employee Comment: Are you nuts? As an insurance agent that sees our nations blue-collar work force and white collar middle income employees daily, I have to say that you obviously are out of touch with how they live. These are hard-working people already struggling to make ends meet and very fearful of how much longer they'll even be able to afford to pay for their "employer provided" health insurance. Do you realize how much of the nations work force is literally spending one weeks worth of income on their families health insurance. Now you want to tax them on the portion that the employer pays for besides. Doesn't that completely erase the logic of them being able to pay their portion on a pre-tax basis? I think it's time you all come and live like the people that drive the heart of America. Why don't you all roll up your sleeves, get dirty, and try to live for a year like most of the "real" people in the nation. You'd come out further ahead to GET RID OF THE RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY THAT LARGE CORPORATIONS ARE ALLOWED TO WRITE OFF FOR PROVIDING "RICH" BENEFIT PLANS. Companies that still have a low co-pay, low-deductible, employer pays all plan are the ones that have created the problem in the first place. What incentive does an employee have to take responsibility for their own health and related costs when they can get "fixed" at everyone elses expense but their own. We have failed to encourage them to be healthy and contain costs because if they just don't feel like exercising and eating properly...they can take pills, have surgery, take more pills, have more surgery, be hospitalized, have transplants and then still complain because the medical society can't "fix" it. You're right...we need reform but before you think you know what and where...roll up your sleeves and come work for $12.00 an hour and pay $400 (if you're lucky) a month for family health insurance. As a single mother of six, with only a high school diploma...how is it I can budget and run a household on a near povery level income and you college educated, degree bearing politicians can't run the budget of an entire county. I seriously think you should all take a serious look at the "needs" of the country and not what you "want" to prove. Thanks for listening.... |