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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (4281)	2/5/2008 3:32:16 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

The way it works now is that the employer deducts your portion of medical insurance from income, and it looks like you never made that money. Yes, I understand that. And the piece does a good job of describing how things would be different for those earning employer-provided benefits and for those currently uninsured. I am not sure what else you deducted. My deductibles exceed 7.5 % of my income so that's why I said I claimed deductions for health insurance. I deducted the premiums I paid on my health insurance, which is partially paid for as a retirement benefit by my former employer. I also deducted the premium on my long term care insurance. I assume that the latter would stay the same and that I would have to pay taxes on the portion of the health insurance paid as a retirement benefit to the extent that it exceeds the premium that I pay. But that is not clear from my reading. And I can't even guess how this change would play with Medicare Part B premiums, which I began paying last month. Not that it matters to me personally. I support the general thrust of this initiative as good for the country and I'll pay whatever I have to pay. But I have too much experience with Congress and the WH not thinking these things through to wonder what they're going to screw up this time. Professional curiosity, I guess, from an old public policy war horse. [As an example of the oddities produced when Congress creates programs, I find that I'm "rich" enough to have to pay the means-tested premium on my Medicare Part B but "poor" enough to get a means-tested check from the government for the proposed stimulus. I find it odd and a bit humorous that on one hand I'm rich and on the other hand, poor.]