McCain Wants To Tax Your Health Benefits as Income

This is a huge economic issue that Obama should have an ad running about. Right now.

HuffPo: McCain Secretly Plans New Tax on Middle Class

McCain intends to tax workers for the value of health insurance that they receive from their employers. Really. It's not included in the description of his plan on his web site. It is, however, on the site of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that specializes in health policy.

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It says McCain would "reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers' taxable income."

The value of the typical plan provided by an employer to a family is $12,106, of which the employer pays $8,824, and the worker pays the remaining $3,282. The median household income is $44,389, which places most American families in the 15 percent income tax bracket.

McCain wants to add the employer's cost -- an additional $8,824 -- to that middle class family's income, then tax it. The hit to the average family is 15 percent of the McCain-added income -- $1,323 more in income taxes.