Pretty much 80% of the population between the ages of 15 and 35 have almost no need for health insurance, and would be much better off paying full price for the rare times they need health care than to pay thousands of dollars into insurance.
That is, unless you are a woman and get pregnant (although I have a friend who delivered at home with a midwife pretty cheap). Both my children required c-sections, and one ended up in the hospital for 10 days, and that would have been a little hard for me to pay for myself.
The government rules require employer health plans to cost the same for all workers, I think in order to get them treated as expenses and not income payments, although I'm frankly weak on that subject. The employer CAN make higher-paid employees pay more (my employer does that), and since for many employers you get paid more as you get older, it's in a small way adjusting for increased costs as you get older -- but definitely i'm getting my money's worth now.
My point though wasn't about forcing people to have health insurance, but to ask why a limited government conservative would ever support giving targetted tax breaks only to people who do certain things a certain way, rather than giving all taxpayers an across-the-board tax cut.
Every one of us pays just a LITTLE BIT MORE in taxes, in order to give tax breaks to those who have health insurance, including those with "gold-plated" insurance plans.
If we just wanted to give more tax breaks to people who have to buy their own plans, we'd have to increase taxes ever so slightly more on ALL OF US, to pay for the special tax breaks for the new people.
I'd rather eliminate the entire tax deduction, and go to a flat tax, but since we can't do that I'm happy with a plan that reduces the subsidy a bit for current recipients in order to make the tax deduction more fair for a larger class of people.
Where is your post on the healthcare agenda?????
I came in late so I didn't read through all the pings to find it.