aYou really need to get to know your legislators.

The latest thing to give them a piece of your mind about: The Bush Health Insurance Proposal.
Robert Pear, The New York Times

Paul Fronstin, director of health research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization, said: “The president’s proposal would mean the end of employer-based benefits as we know them. It gives employers a way out of providing the benefits because their employees could get the same tax break on their own.”

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“The president’s proposal addresses inequities in the tax code that provide an open-ended subsidy for premiums paid by employers,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “If your employer does not provide health insurance and you have to buy it on your own, you get no tax benefit at all. The president’s plan would eliminate that distinction.”

But Mr. Reischauer said, “A glaring problem with the president’s plan is that he did not call for any stronger regulation of the individual insurance market.” In that market as it now exists in most states, insurers can deny coverage or charge higher rates to sick people.

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Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, said, “The president’s proposal would do little to help the uninsured, but would undermine the employer-based system through which 160 million people get coverage.”

Richard J. Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, agreed. “The tax proposal would have the effect of driving people to the small-group insurance market — a market that has proved unstable,” Mr. Umbdenstock said. “For many people, even with a tax break, coverage would remain unaffordable.”

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