In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Austin Frakt over at Political Animal points out:

On Tuesday, in Florida, Mitt Romney said,

Well right now, most people get their insurance through their employer and the reason they do that is because their employer gets a tax deduction when they buy insurance for you. But if you’re a very small-business person—let’s say a one-person business—you don’t get a tax deduction for buying insurance. And if you’re an individual that’s not employed, you don’t get a tax deduction for buying your own insurance.

Right. And, so, most economists and many policy wonks, as well as deficit hawks, advocate eliminating or phasing out the tax deductibility of employer-sponsored health insurance. Doing so would increase tax revenue by about $250 billion per year (pdf). It would also discourage overly generous health care benefits. Seems like a good idea to dump this tax subsidy. But, it looks like Romney is leaning the other way, because his next sentence was:

What I would do is level the playing field and say individuals can buy insurance on the same tax advantage basis that businesses can buy insurance. [Emphasis added.]

He then asks the following:

Can anyone tell me why Romney wants to expand the tax preferred status of health insurance? Doesn’t he believe we overspend on health care? Doesn’t he believe in the incentive effects of taxation? Isn’t he interested in reducing the deficit and/or cutting marginal tax rates? Why, then, would he want to create an even bigger tax expenditure?

Short answer?  Because Mitt Romney doesn't care about reducing the deficit, he wants to get elected.

In order to get elected, he's trying to sell the employer tax deduction phase-out as a (lightning, scary organ music) MASSIVE TAX INCREASE ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS.  What he wants is to sell the same tax subsidy to individuals so that people will vote for him.  It's a moronic plan with no real application in a broader picture of responsible health-care cost controlling in America.  It sounds neat in a 10 second sound bite however.

Mitt Romney, if you haven't noticed, lies so much that everyone is suffering from obfuscation fatigue.  He's already said that he'll repeal Obamacare on "Day One" of his Presidency.