I also think that Mary means Goldman Sachs instead of AIG because a) AIG is not in a position to turn up their nose at anybody and b) the Fed and Congress control whether AIG gets any more help.

Employers ought to back any measure that takes current and legacy costs off their hands. Credible national health insurance and health care reforms would do that. But it would come at the price of accepting a role for government the acceptance of which is normally bred out of managers before they make it to the top.

I don’t see why employers should like this tax, either. But as auto companies’ behavior demonstrates, employers have been known to prefer short-term self-destructive behavior at the expense of their long term survival.

Companies began offering health insurance as a benefit at a time when wages were frozen by law to keep inflation down during WWII. Said the companies, “We can’t offer you a raise, but we *can* give you this extra, non-wage benefit.” By the time the inflation-fighting law was lifted, this became the accepted business practice.

As with using bankruptcies to get out from under inconvenient labor contracts, taxing insurance benefits takes away only the part of the deal owed to labor, not the part owed by management. It doesn’t directly reduce what the employer expects in return for providing insurance.

That’s a typically GOP approach – a way to cut the cost of a contract economically without directly challenging it – that the Democrats may find unproductive at the voting booth.

I guess employers taking out life insurance on employees is all of a piece with this view.