For decades, employers have been able to provide their employees health insurance benefits on a pre tax basis. This benefitted both the employee, as well as the employer who could write off these contributions as tax-deductible business expenses. This structure means roughly $250 billion less in taxes collected by the government each year. While Obama firmly opposed McCain’s proposal to tax these health insurance benefits for the first time in our nation’s history, he and fellow Democrats are now looking at the potential of the idea to generate funds needed for sweeping health care reform. While the pre-tax nature of health benefits has contributed in part to rising costs, the practice has continued because people feared changing it would result in the erosion of this system. There is a large contingent in opposition of taxing these benefits, despite their regressive nature. What would result if this change actually came to pass?