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Wyden Wants to Tax Health Care Benefits
Last year, in his failed run for the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) proposed taxing working families’ health care benefits as part of his deeply flawed plan for health care reform.
The reaction was direct and swift. “No!” said unions, health care reform advocates and consumers. Candidate Barack Obama blasted the McCain proposal.
But today, the idea of taxing health care benefits has resurfaced, and from an unlikely source: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who for most of his career has been a good friend of working families. His call to tax your health care benefits is buried in legislation (S. 391) that he introduced this year and is now being considered by the Senate Finance Committee as one of several possible ways to finance health care reform.
The Oregon AFL-CIO, AFSCME, NEA and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) are telling Wyden, through a new radio ad campaign in Oregon, that with health care costs soaring:
The last thing we need is to pay more.
In a joint announcement, the unions say:
Taxing the health care benefits of working families as income would increase the cost of health care and lead many employers to stop providing health benefits altogether. Far from moving us in the direction of comprehensive health care reform, Senator Wyden’s health tax would only make the problem worse.
Earlier this month, Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain and Ken Allen, executive director of AFSCME Council 75, wrote in a posting on Blue Oregon:
Taxing health benefits discourages employers from offering benefits to their employees, and in the current system it would unfairly discriminate against small businesses and people in workplaces with more women and older workers. Health insurance for older people and for women tends to be higher than insurance for young men.
Worse, this tax targets middle-class Americans…middle-income Americans who are already struggling to pay their health care costs will get slapped with the full cost of a health insurance tax.
Says Dan Clay, president of UFCW Local 555 in Portland:
Our members have worked hard to earn the health care benefits they receive through their employers. The last thing they need is for those benefits to be taxed.
Chamberlain and Allen write that there are better ways to reform health care—expand coverage for all and make health care affordable.
Let’s get health care consumers and purchasers together with legislators to come up with a real fix to fund health care—something that encourages coverage, lowers costs and doesn’t punish middle-class Americans.
Click here and here for more information and to send Wyden a message that taxing health care benefits is a bad idea.
And don’t forget, there’s still time to take the AFL-CIO’s 2009 Health Care for America Survey, where you can tell us what you think of the current state of health care and share your personal story. Click here to take the survey and tell your story.
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5 Comments
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In case some do not know, after the single payer folks were removed from Senate Finance committee hearings; the committee heard testimony about taxing healthcare benefits to insure the bottom lines of Wall Street healthcare companies.
I am a supporter of HR676, Medicare for Americans Act and that seems the best of all options. Sad that Obama and the Senate removed these supporters from their healthcare meetings and politically a mistake I would believe.
The Oregon state AFL-CIO and AFSCME Council 75 have endorsed HR 676 single payer health care legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). the Oregon NEA has endorsed a single payer healthcare system. the Active Ballot Club of UFCW Local 555 has urged the UFCW international union to endorse HR 676. HR 676 would not require any taxation of health benefits. Under HR 676 no one would loose healthcare if they went on strike or lost their job. Single payer is the only way to cover everyone
After the Insurance industry, who are getting pretty cushy in these hearings with Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who by the way has received $183,750 from health insurance companies and $229,020 from drug companies in the last two election cycles.
Now the insurance industry has stated that President Obama “substantially overstated” their promise to cut costs. Yet they continue to sit at the table in the “reform” of health care, while single payer advocates are shut out.
Baucus Flees From Single Payer Advocates Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) drove up to the front door of the Kaiser Family Foundation in downtown Washington, D.C. this morning.
His initial idea – park on G Street in front of the office building – and walk in the front door to meet reporters gathered inside.
But activists from Single Payer Action were out front, waiting to question Baucus about why, over the past two weeks, he ordered thirteen of them arrested, handcuffed, and charged with “disruption of Congress.”
Click here to read more on our site:CommonDreams.org.
According to the report, Senator Baucus
H.R. 676, The United States National Health Care Act, or (in the case of senators) S. 703, the American Health Security Act of 2009. These 2 pireces of legislation is the solution to the crisis. It eliminates the profit driven health care industry, and provides health care, not red tape. Contact your Congress Person from both chambers and urge them to co-sponsor both pieces of legislation.
Again where are the leaders of the AFL-CIO?
It’s going to take us – the ranks and file – marching in the streets, picketing, potests and workstoppages to win health care justice (HR 676).
Congress will not budge an inch unless forced to do so.
If certain “labor leaders” are unwilling to mobilize the ranks, then they need to follow or get the hell out of the way.
Period.
Cased closed.
Last November Oregon voted a Republican senator out of office. Now Wyden’s taking his place as errand boy for big business. The same problem needs the same solution.