Limiting the employer tax exclusion for healthcare is the wrong idea

The Republicans are looking everywhere for funds to fix healthcare, as well they should. This problem is not an easy one to solve, however. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers were faced with the Cadillac tax. As a result, they wasted no time planning to mitigate the effect. While the Democrats seemed to believe that this was a pot of gold available to solve some of the cost issues, the reality turned out much differently.

Consultants, like me, have spent the last few years planning for our clients to avoid ever paying the Cadillac tax. Employers fled to health savings accounts, self-insured plans and any strategy that would reduce costs below the taxable threshold. Instead of a pot of gold, there was a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow waiting to laugh at the CBO scoring, which had predicted billions in revenue.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Now, some prominent Republicans are looking to limit the employee health insurance tax exclusion or its counterpart, the employer deduction, to fund healthcare for the uninsured. I am hopeful that they take the time to look closely at the potential impact of this decision.

Also see: “Retirement industry ready to protect 401(k) tax status.”

Peeling back the onion, altering the tax-favored status of employer-provided benefits will have the same effect as the Cadillac tax — employers are going to plan around it. More than 175 million Americans get healthcare through their employer, and this is not a progressive benefit. If the employer exclusion is eliminated there would be little incentive for employers to continue to provide benefits — and if they do, the pressure to reduce costs, and thus benefits, will be intense. The impact on lower-paid workers would be far greater than the more highly-compensated group.

Finding the pot of gold
Politicians may not be listening, but the effect of this change in tax treatment would be the opposite of what is desired. We need to go after the cost of healthcare. That’s the pot of gold.

Here are some suggestions to go after cost:

• Further encourage the shift from pay-for-volume or pay-for-services-rendered to reimbursement of providers based upon value and the outcome of treatment.
• Make drug pricing fairer; eliminate rebates which obscure real prices and regulate obscene pharmaceutical profits for patent-protected drugs.
• Introduce meaningful tort reform.
• Expand Medicaid in every state. This is the platform that should be used for subsidized care.

Each one of these changes is going to require a great deal of effort, but they are better than an ill-fitting Band-Aid which is just going to make healthcare even more expensive for the individual.