A Pat On The Back

The New York Times offers us a good editorial this morning about the fuss being made over the potential loss of health care coverage for retirees now that the new reform law eliminates a subsidy that used to given to business.

It is a non-issue.

The subsidy being eliminated is one where companies were allowed to deduct, for tax purposes, an expense that they did not actually incur out of pocket. Instead the deduction was for payments by the government that were funneled through the businesses. It was government cash paying for the service, but because it passed through company hands it became tax deductible for the company in question.

In other words it was a rip-off of the taxpayer.

Guess when it was passed into law? That’s right during the Bush era. At the same time he was preventing Medicare from using its bargaining power to get us all lower drug prices.

The rip off should never have been on the books in the first place.

The pat on the back?

That’s for me.

I told you about this last Wednesday. The NYT: all the old news fit to print.