CALIFORNIA WILD FIRES DESTROY OVER 700 HOMES, FORCE 250,000 TO EVACUATE

From Reuters:

Wildfires burned unchecked on Tuesday in Southern California from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to evacuate, at least 700 homes destroyed, and little hope for relief from the hot desert winds fanning the flames.

The National Weather Service said "strong and damaging winds" will continue near Los Angeles through mid-afternoon, and high wind warnings may be issued for some areas Tuesday night. In San Diego, the hot, dry winds fanning the flames were expected through Wednesday.

At least 13 fires, whipped by hot, gale-force Santa Ana winds have swept unchecked over the lower half of the state over the past two days, overwhelming fire crews and state emergency services. Some 200,000 acres were torched, one person killed and more than three dozen injured.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger summoned aid from 1,500 National Guard troops, including 200 from the Mexican border, to help with firefighting, evacuations and crowd control.

Meanwhile, some 250,000 people who had been ordered to evacuate ahead of the flames spent the night out of their homes, about 10,000 of them at a San Diego area football stadium that had been converted to an emergency shelter.

PRESIDENT BUSH UNVEILS HEALTH INSURANCE PLAN DETAILS IN STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

As expected, President Bush outlined some details of his controversial health insurance plan in last night's State of the Union Address. His plan calls for an end to tax-free premiums in employer-provided health insurance plans, making the premium paid taxable income. To offset some of the tax burden, all taxpayers who either have employer-provided health insurance or purchase their own insurance would receive a deduction of $15,000 for a family plan or $7,500 for an individual. Currently, the average cost of an employer-provided family plan is $11,500, while the average for individual plans is $4,300.

From USA Today:

"For a lot of people, it would be a bonanza," says Joe Antos of American Enterprise Institute. He and other supporters of the plan say it would encourage employers to offer less-generous insurance plans. They say generous plans drive up the cost of health care.

Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute says the proposal might lead more employers to drop coverage. Some employers might also find that younger, healthier workers would opt out of company plans to buy their own insurance, leaving sicker, more expensive workers behind, he says.

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.