Health Premiums

Why does government have to make things so complicated? It is obvious to middle-class, employed but uninsured Americans like me that we have a health-care crisis. Two years ago, I was driven into personal bankruptcy by the first major illness in my then-51 years of life; the hospital bill by itself was over $227,000--and then the doctor bills started coming in!

But I don’t think we need a bureaucratic monstrosity such as the (hopefully) now-dead Clinton plan, or California’s Proposition 186. I’m no economist, but it seems to me that what we really need is some incentive for employers to provide health-care coverage through private carriers. So, I propose that employers be given tax credits for the health care premiums they pay in addition to business-expense tax deductions that they already receive. Maybe small employers (with, say, 1-49 employees) could receive credit equal to two times the premiums they pay, medium-sized employers (50-100 employees) 1 1/2 times, and large employers (with over 100 employees) could receive tax credit exactly equal to the premiums they pay. Under such a plan, I believe that most employers would pay at least part of the premiums for their employees.

Wouldn’t this be an awful lot of money for the government to lose? Well, no. If a plan like this were adopted, I believe that employment in such fields as insurance, health care, and pharmaceutical research and development would skyrocket--and payroll taxes raised from these new jobs would more than take up the slack.

DON YOUNG

North Hollywood