Bush pushes health care proposals in Midwest

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. (AP) _ President Bush sought a boost for his health care proposal Thursday in the stories of a waitress and a software service engineer who can't get insurance at work and can't

Thursday, January 25th 2007, 1:56 pm

By: News On 6

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. (AP) _ President Bush sought a boost for his health care proposal Thursday in the stories of a waitress and a software service engineer who can't get insurance at work and can't afford it on their own.

He also used the occasion to accuse majority Democrats in Congress of criticizing his ideas "because of pure politics."

One of the signature items from the president's State of the Union address this week is a complex proposal aimed at encouraging more individual purchasing of basic health insurance plans. It also would introduce market forces to bring down health costs overall and make buying coverage affordable for some of the millions now uninsured.

The plan calls for a standard tax deduction for anyone who has health insurance, $15,000 for families and $7,500 for individuals, no matter whether their coverage comes through work or private purchases. That would be offset, though, by for the first time taxing an employer's contributions to workers' insurance coverage over the deduction amount.

During a freewheeling discussion here, Esmerelda Wergin told Bush that she, her husband and their two young sons lack health insurance coverage because the restaurant where she works doesn't offer it and they haven't yet been able to find a plan they could afford on their own.

"It's very difficult," she said.

Likewise, Dan Jones said he was forced to cancel the coverage he bought for himself after premiums rose to $400 a month. The White House calculated that Jones would see a tax cut of $2,272 under Bush's plan _ money he could use to find a new plan.

"There are plenty of people who feel like they're doing just fine when it comes to health insurance, particularly those who work for big corporate America. That's just fine," Bush said. "It's just that the system discriminates against the Dan Joneses. ... We're trying to move somebody like Dan from being a statistic, an uninsured person, into insurance."

In a departure from the president's usual practice, there was no audience for the discussion, held in a small room at a Saint Luke's Health System hospital here that had enough space only for the participants' U-shaped table and a modest contingent of local and national media.

The administration says 80 percent of people with employer-provided health insurance would see a tax cut under the president's proposal, with the rest seeing a tax increase unless they switch to a less costly health plan. That ratio would narrow in future years, and perhaps even reverse.

Those who would benefit are primarily those with more basic health plans through work, or the 17 million who now buy coverage through the individual or small-group market.

Those who would see a tax increase are not only the wealthy. Many workers in blue-collar, union-covered industries benefit from generous employer-sponsored health plans.

Democrats, now in control of Congress, have denounced the plan as dead on arrival. They say it does nothing to help the majority of the uninsured who are too poor to pay taxes and unnecessarily undermines the nation's health insurance system, which is built around the workplace where more than half of Americans, or about 160 million, now get their coverage.

Not so fast, said the president.

"These are practical things to get done, and they're hard to get done in Washington because people in Washington have a different view. They want the government basically making the decisions for health care," Bush said. "If people in Washington are serious about dealing with the uninsured, here is a serious idea for them to consider instead of just dismissing things because of pure politics."