Healthcare Update: Businesses Dislike Taxes

The way the law works now, all employers pay a tax added onto their health insurance premiums, which is meant to cover workers at other companies who don't have insurance. DiMasi's bill allowed employers to deduct that from their taxes, provided they spent that much on healthcare. The problem is that for some companies with high-paid employees, healthcare costs are below the amount of the insurance tax, which is calculated as a percentage of payroll (because the cost of health insurance doesn't go up just because a person is rich (unless, like Bostonist, that person spends all his spare cash on booze)). Bostonist doesn't understand why the bill didn't just abolish the insurance tax and create a new system, whereby all employers are required to provide a certain level of healthcare - not in terms of percentage of payroll, but quality of care - or pay a penalty. But, as is frequently the case, no one consulted us.

In any event, business interests, which were already in an uproar over DiMasi's proposal, went into a double-uproar yesterday, and DiMasi backed down, saying he'd fix it so companies that provided care to their well-paid employees wouldn't suffer. Color us cynical, but Bostonist suspects that the business community (and the Governor, of course) will continue to find the new plan unpalatable (they like to call it a "jobs tax," which is supposed to sound really bad but mostly just sounds sort of awkward to us). As usual, stay tuned.