and josh bivens, an economist at the economic policy institute, a think tank that receives some funding from labor groups. welcome to you both. jonathan gruber, why is this a good idea? >> well, thanks for having me on, gwen. i think it's a good idea because we need to look at what happens currently when people make the decision between getting paid in wages or health insurance. if m.i.t. offers to give me a $1,000 raise i'm only going to take home about $600 because i'll be taxed. if it says here's $1,000 extra fringe benefit in our health insurance i get to keep the whole $,000 because i'm not taxed on that. that tax subsidy costs our nation about $250 billion a year. and leads by many economists in the cbo estimates to excessive health insurance coverage and rising health care costs. what this bill would do is slightly scale back that existing tax bias, by taxing the most expensive plans on the amount they spend above a certain threshold. and basically scaling back the give-away we now have to the most expensive health insurance plans. >> ifill: let me just let josh bivens in here no

. >> ifill: let meust let josh bivens in here now because h says it's a giveway to the existing health insurance ans. what do yosay? >> i don'tnow if i'd call it a give-away. i do think it's not a grt idea. onproblem is it's often... it's called a dillac tax. the idea is th were taxing outlandish plans that pride generous covage. it's not very well targeteat all. i would be in far of a well targeted way to do this t this is a ve poorly targeted licy proposal. >> ill: the people who benefit om it are just middle class fol? >> iould say there are reass why health insurance ans are expensive and gerosity is not necessarily one of them. we have very dysfunctional health insurance market d height cost plans do notqual gh value plans. research says of thentire spread of health insurance premiums the cost. only 4% of that can be accounted for by generity of plans. you're likely to have an expensive plan if u work for a small firm, ifou work with a firm with an aging work force. 's not about cadillac plans or lavish nefits it's people who work in the kinds of workples. it's poorly targeted. >>