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Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) have written a letter asking members of the congressional super committee to preserve the tax treatment of employer-sponsored health plans, according to the The Hill’s Healthwatch blog. The super committee is charged with proposing at least $1.5 trillion in deficit-reduction measures over 10 years.
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Half of our population, approximately 160 million Americans, gets health insurance coverage through an employer-sponsored plan. For more than 60 years, health benefits have been exempt from employees’ taxable income, a provision Courtney and Cole call “the lynchpin” of our health coverage system.
“Efforts to cap or eliminate these tax exclusions would have far reaching consequences that would not only reduce health coverage for million of Americans, but would also increase long-term federal spending obligations,” they write.
NAIFA agrees with Courtney and Cole and the more than 100 other members of Congress who have signed onto their letter.
Imposing new taxes on health benefits would:
- Eliminate an incentive for employers to offer health coverage, forcing more Americans to either go without or find coverage on their own
- Increase costs for consumers forced to switch from group plans to individual coverage
- Reduce cost savings generated by employers’ health management plans
- Force Americans now covered by employer-sponsored plans onto Medicaid