Senator Rubio is proposing to fix a longstanding problem in federal tax law. He wants to make sure that all Americans get a comparable tax break for health insurance, regardless of whether or not they get their insurance through their place of work. For many years, federal law conferred a generous tax break for health insurance only on employer-paid premiums, which are excluded from the taxable compensation of workers for both income- and payroll-tax purposes.
Obamacare’s defenders would say that Obamacare fixed this problem by giving households credits that they can use when they buy insurance through the law’s “exchanges.” But the Obamacare credits are not connected in any way with the value of the tax benefit for employer-provided coverage, they are income-tested and thus phase out for middle-income families, and they can be used only to purchase heavily regulated plans.
Rubio’s proposal would truly level the playing field by first getting rid of Obamacare and then giving Americans who buy insurance on their own, rather than through their place of work, a tax credit of roughly comparable value to the tax break conferred on an employer plan of average cost.
