PRESIDENT BUSH PROPOSES HEALTH INSURANCE TAX CHANGES

In his weekly radio address this morning, President Bush said that he wants to change tax codes to make insurance more affordable for the uninsured. From The Wall Street Journal:

"Rising health care costs are making insurance too expensive for millions of our citizens," Mr. Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. To remedy the situation without hiking taxes or creating a new entitlement program, he says the tax code can be rewritten to treat health insurance more like home ownership.

"The current tax code encourages home ownership by allowing you to deduct the interest on your mortgage from your taxes," Mr. Bush said. "We can reform the tax code, so that it provides a similar incentive for you to buy health insurance."

Mr. Bush didn't outline the nuts and bolts of his tax-code proposal, but it is expected to include capping some taxpayers' ability to exclude employer-based healthcare benefits from their income, subjecting them to federal income tax. Savings could go toward tax credits for lower-income people who buy health insurance or for state insurance pools.

Altering the tax benefits for employer-provided health care involve far-reaching changes to the tax code affecting millions of taxpayers and companies. Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform proposed in November 2005 to limit the tax benefit for employer-provided health care to $11,500 for families and $5,000 for singles. The recommendation, which has languished with the tax panel's other reform proposals, came after witnesses told the tax panel the existing federal tax subsidies for health insurance were benefiting rich workers while raising insurance prices for the poor and increasing the number of uninsured.