The American Spectator

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Better Late Than Never : /p>

I certainly agree with Mr. Hogberg's view of Bush's tax reform on health insurance. I am a practicing physician. I just dropped my employer-provided healthcare. I had an employer-provided policy with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, covering myself (age 57), my wife (age 60), and son (age 22, in grad school). My monthly premium for healthcare was $1427.46. My employer covered $375.00 of that premium. That left $1052.46 that I paid monthly (withheld from my paycheck) with no tax benefit at all. My employer would benefit to the extent that the $375.00 was tax-free to the employer, although my employer is a non-profit organization, and I am not sure of their tax status regarding this. I am in a 28 percent tax bracket, so I would have to earn close to $180,000 a year to pay the $12,629.52 yearly premiums. I just cancelled my employer-provided policy and obtained a Health Savings Account policy, on my own, for which I pay $507 monthly premium ($6,084 post tax dollars, or about $8,500 pre-tax dollars) for a $5,000 deductible health plan, and am allowed to put $6,450 yearly tax free in a health savings account, with a tax savings of $1,806 per year, making my net savings with all tax consequences included about $5,000 a year. In addition, I keep whatever portion of the $6,450 I put in my savings account, plus accrued value. Thus I may benefit by up to about $1,145 a year. You can bet I'll be thinking hard about every healthcare dollar I spend. As a physician, I have an advantage. I won't be going in for an MRI to assess my benign positional vertigo, for example, which my patients often demand, because I know it's self-limited, and not a brain tumor. Interestingly, I asked my employer to continue to provide the $375 a month that was being paid on my traditional policy, but my employer adamantly refused. It was my employer's way or the highway. I took the highway. Perhaps more risk, but also greater potential financial benefit. I will not be ruined financially, as my costs are capped by the deductible.

Further, with Bush's tax proposal, if I understand correctly, I would be eligible for reducing my taxable income by $15,000, which would provide $4,200 of additional tax relief, which would go a long way toward offsetting the $6,084 I pay for premiums for my high deductible policy. I would be paying out of pocket then $1884 of premiums, plus $6,450 to my savings account, tax advantaged to be only $4,278, for a total annual expenditure of $6,162, of which I could possibly retain $6,450, making my potential net expenditure a negative $288.

I stand a chance of actually making money on my insurance policy! Better me than Dr. McGuire (recently forced out CEO of UnitedHealthcare, who received about a $2 billion retirement package, after back-dating his own options). I won't, however, pass up my follow-up colonoscopy, or my wife's mammogram and bone density study, and I will keep taking my cholesterol medicine, so my savings would not be quite so great.

Exercise and diet, however, are free. My family is quite healthy, and thus would look on this system as a godsend financially. My wife and I will potentially have an account from which to help pay Medicare deductibles and co-pays when we retire (although even at our ages, we are doubtful of Medicare solvency when we retire). Had we been doing this all of our lives, we likely wouldn't need Medicare coverage. I'm certainly hoping that my son won't, as I am fairly certain Medicare will not be viable when he hits 65, or 67, or 70, or 80...or whatever the coverage age is in 40-50 years. The benefits have been vastly overpromised by unscrupulous politicians for too long, and will continue to be so.

p>One advantage for me would be if the deductibles on the high deductible policy were allowed to rise, so that as I accumulate resources in my savings account, my premiums paid out of pocket would fall. When I had $20,000 in our savings account, I would like to increase the deductible to $20,000, and thereby reduce my monthly premiums, which would make the system even more financially beneficial to me. If I had expenditures out of my savings account, depleting the balance, the deductible could fall again, etc., but be adjusted according to my balance in the account. Maybe some Congressperson will advance such legislation. br> -- Kent Lyon /p> p> STAND-UP GUYS br> Re: John Tabin's The Long Shot Compulsion

topics:
Taxes, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Social Security, Law, Iraq, NATO, Conservatism, Immigration, Medicare