Middle Class Welfare: The Pros and Cons of Employer Sponsored Health Insurance

Hi. I’m Lone Candle, and I’ve gotta tell ya somethin’, JACK! YOU! Are a welfare queen.

In a previous piece, I described how many get so angry and critical of traditional welfare without realizing that they themselves get handouts from the government. Subsidies that support people in the middle class are larger, and cost more, than many classic welfare programs.

The big daddy here is the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance. If you get insurance through your employer, then chances are, you don’t pay taxes on that income. That’s a huge subsidy, and others who don’t get that break, have to pay relatively more taxes. Thus, you’re sucking from the taxpayer’s teat while others are not. You get a special break on your health insurance, and others have to make up your portion of the government’s expenses.

Now, when it comes to healthcare, there are other government benefits than just employer-sponsored health plans. For those of lower income, there’s Medicaid. For those 65 and older, there’s Medicare. Due to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, there are subsidies for people with relatively low incomes. There are also other smaller government programs.

The point to mentioning these is, employer-sponsored health insurance isn’t the only subsidy out there, so the people who are really getting screwed are those who aren’t rewarded by falling into one of these other buckets. For them…