AAPHD Resolution on Taxing Employee Health Care Benefits

Passed November 2, 1985
J Pub Health Dent 1985;46(1):56.

WHEREAS, the unmet dental needs in the United States are extensive, and

WHEREAS, dental prepayment programs now cover over 103 million people, substantially facilitating and encouraging access to preventive and basic oral health services, and

WHEREAS, taxing health benefits may not solve the problem of rising health care costs nor provide significant new tax revenues because employer contributions could be shifted to nontaxed benefits, and

WHEREAS, a tax on health benefits would not affect the primary causes of increased health care costs - hospital and physician care - but could encourage employers and employees to drop dental benefits in order to avoid taxes, and

WHEREAS, passage of the tax on health care would jeopardize prepayment dental programs and may create a barrier to obtaining preventive and basic oral health services, therefore

BE IT RESOLVED that the American Association of Public Health Dentistry strongly oppose legislation which would tax employees for various employer health benefit contributions, and be it further

RESOLVED, that the AAPHD will support efforts of other concerned organizations to delete such provisions in various legislative proposals that would tax health benefits, and be it further

RESOLVED, that the AAPHD will encourage Congress to identify the primary causes for the rapidly increasing costs of health care and to develop legislation to contain these trends without penalizing the public in either health or economic terms, and be it further

RESOLVED, that the AAPHD present this resolution to members of appropriate congressional committees and subcommittees charged with developing tax revision legislation.