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I wrote all of that in a text program & copied & pasted it
Posted on: October 6, 2017 at 12:59:06 CT
JeffB MU
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here because my browser was responding so slowly.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by it looked like a group policy rather than an individual policy. I was talking about both.
It boils down to:
I think the government should not be favoring group policies over individual policies. Give the same tax treatment to both. Do not mandate group policies for any company.
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For a short time it was possible for companies to design a plan where they would just pay a set amount into the plan for each employee and the employee could use it for health/medical expenses, including health insurance. For instance each CSR could spend maybe $400/mo on health insurance premiums (or co-pays, deductibles, dental or vision policies or expenses) and it would be a tax deduction for the employer and would not count as income to the employee for tax purposes. The employer could set the amount it was willing to pay for each classification. They could pay the least for employees at the lowest level, a bit more for middle management, more yet for upper management and so on. It was all at the employer's discretion. But it was to their advantage to pay more into these funds vs as salary as it would save them on their portion of the payroll taxes. Employees also liked it because it was a benefit from the company that was not considered taxable income. It also gave them flexibility in choosing what insurance company and options they wanted. If they were covered on a spouse's plan through a different employer they could still use this to pay for their portion of the premiums on the spouse's plan & if anything was left over use it for dental, vision (glasses, contacts, lasik surgery, premiums), prescriptions & some other qualified medical expenses.
I think that option was a major improvement over government mandated, government micromanaged care forced upon employers and employees, but I think just giving whatever reasonable tax breaks they want to give for health care expenses directly to ALL consumers and eliminate all of the employer mandates. If companies want to offer some sort of group policies and there is a good economic reason for them to do so sans government interference, great. If not, that's ok too.
Edited by JeffB at 13:00:04 on 10/06/17
I'm not quite sure what you mean by it looked like a group policy rather than an individual policy. I was talking about both.
It boils down to:
I think the government should not be favoring group policies over individual policies. Give the same tax treatment to both. Do not mandate group policies for any company.
-------
For a short time it was possible for companies to design a plan where they would just pay a set amount into the plan for each employee and the employee could use it for health/medical expenses, including health insurance. For instance each CSR could spend maybe $400/mo on health insurance premiums (or co-pays, deductibles, dental or vision policies or expenses) and it would be a tax deduction for the employer and would not count as income to the employee for tax purposes. The employer could set the amount it was willing to pay for each classification. They could pay the least for employees at the lowest level, a bit more for middle management, more yet for upper management and so on. It was all at the employer's discretion. But it was to their advantage to pay more into these funds vs as salary as it would save them on their portion of the payroll taxes. Employees also liked it because it was a benefit from the company that was not considered taxable income. It also gave them flexibility in choosing what insurance company and options they wanted. If they were covered on a spouse's plan through a different employer they could still use this to pay for their portion of the premiums on the spouse's plan & if anything was left over use it for dental, vision (glasses, contacts, lasik surgery, premiums), prescriptions & some other qualified medical expenses.
I think that option was a major improvement over government mandated, government micromanaged care forced upon employers and employees, but I think just giving whatever reasonable tax breaks they want to give for health care expenses directly to ALL consumers and eliminate all of the employer mandates. If companies want to offer some sort of group policies and there is a good economic reason for them to do so sans government interference, great. If not, that's ok too.
Edited by JeffB at 13:00:04 on 10/06/17
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I wrote all of that in a text program & copied & pasted it - JeffB MU - 10/6 12:59:06