Bush Health Plan

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will propose a tax deduction of $7,500 for individuals and $15,000 for families regardless of whether they buy their own health insurance or receive medical coverage at work.

The proposal, to be announced Tuesday in his State of the Union address, is aimed at giving the uninsured an incentive to purchase a medical plan. It also is designed to encourage those with generous plans to either embrace cheaper insurance or pay taxes on the part that exceeds the deduction, a Bush administration official familiar with the proposals said Saturday.

If passed by Congress, the proposal would be the first time that workers could get a tax break if they bought their own insurance.

But it also would be the first time that some employer-provided health care benefits could be taxed. Health care benefits provided by companies are currently exempt from income and payroll taxes.

--- GoozNews explains : "It's hard not to conclude that this plan was carefully designed to put another nail in the coffin of the employer-based health insurance system, and build upper-middle-class support for individual families purchasing their own plans and care. It has nothing to do with insuring the uninsured, since the benefits are far less than what is needed to effectively move them into the insurance pool."

(Goozner is author of The $800 Million Pill -- "Goozner contends that American taxpayers are in fact footing the bill twice: once by supporting government-funded research and again by paying astronomically high prices for prescription drugs. Goozner demonstrates that almost all the important new drugs of the past quarter-century actually originated from research at taxpayer-funded universities and at the National Institutes of Health.")