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I'll try a different way.

An employer-supplied plan can be treated as if the employer pays you a larger salary, and then you get to pay the full cost of insurance with your after-tax income. Right now though, the government lets you deduct the entire amount you pay for the health care plan, so long as you buy the EMPLOYERS plan, but not if you opt out of that plan and buy the one YOU want.

Under Bush's plan, little will change, except the government will stop "incentivising" you with tax cuts for any amount over $15,000 that YOU CHOOSE to spend for a health care insurance plan.

They will use the money they save NOT giving full tax breaks, to give tax breaks to those who either CHOOSE to opt out of their employer plans, OR who have no employer plan, and instead purchase their own health care plan.

Purchasing your own health plan is better for the system, because you get to choose what YOU want, and haggle over the price, while your employer has a different motivation.

But in any case, this is no more an "income redistribution" then limiting the income tax deduction for home mortgages to a million dollars.

Income taxes are progressive, and therefore DO redistribute income. special tax breaks for favored acts are a way for government to unduly control our lives, and cutting the amount that happens is a good thing. Of course, what we WANT to happen is for that money to be put back into other forms of tax relief, preferably across-the-board tax cuts. But offering to the people without employer-sponsored health care the SAME TAX DEDUCTIONS which are now available only to a privileged few is a rational government policy. Giving everybody the same tax deductions is not unfair redistribution of wealth, it is simple fairness.

Giving everybody the same tax deductions is not unfair redistribution of wealth, it is simple fairness.

It is not everyone getting the same tax deduction, and you know it. I would have to (as a single person, and if my employer paid more than $7,500 for my health benefits) have to pay taxes on anything over that in order to keep my employer's benefit that I got as a part of my salary for agreeing to work at his business. That is part of my compensation, my salary. Now the IRS comes along and says those benefits that I was given when I was hired are now going to be taxed. That's money out of my pocket. So now I'm put in the position of accepting that I will be taxed or go out and try to find a health insurance plan that will be under the $7,500, in order not to be taxed. The odds are I will not find a policy that had the same benefits or better than the one I already had through my employment. So I stick with my employer's plan (that's assuming all employers don't use Bush's plan as an excuse to dump all their employees' health benefits, if Bush's plan goes through and which is the true motivation of Bush, give another perk to big business), I'm taxed. Now, Joe Schmoe doesn't have a health insurance plan where he works, and because of who knows, intelligence IQ, schooling, laziness, short attention span at any given job, just bad luck, etc., will get a tax break to go buy a health insurance plan rather than having to save his own money for it, and that money will come from the taxes on the wealthier person's health plan who keeps his employers' insurance in spite of being taxed on it because it is better than any plan he could go out and buy himself. And that's the way it really is. Can't have anyone having too good a health plan, can we, without taxing it. Just the whole concept of TAXING your health benefits sucks. It's more taxes on those who weren't paying it on their benefits before. And if you are a self-insurer, go work for someone if you don't want to pay after-taxes on a health plan, rather than ripping the money off from someone else to use as the great leveler. How can you not see this?