How many ways is this a stupid idea?

as taken directly from the "State of the Union Address":

And so tonight, I propose two new initiatives to help more Americans afford their own insurance. First, I propose a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the standard tax deduction for dependents. Families with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $15,000 of their income. Single Americans with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $7,500 of their income. With this reform, more than 100 million men, women, and children who are now covered by employer-provided insurance will benefit from lower tax bills.
At the same time, this reform will level the playing field for those who do not get health insurance through their job. For Americans who now purchase health insurance on their own, this proposal would mean a substantial tax savings -- $4,500 for a family of four making $60,000 a year. And for the millions of other Americans who have no health insurance at all, this deduction would help put a basic private health insurance plan within their reach. Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making healthcare affordable for more Americans.

Let's start with the obvious:

A family of four who lives off the income of one full-time worker at $15.38/hr makes $615.38 per week and assuming paid vacation and holidays $32,000 per year.

It would be a very modest family health care plan that could be purchased for the average family of four at $15,000. The household would need to choose to purchase this plan at exactly 46.875% of their total household income leaving $17,000 for all their other needs. Even supposing the tax credit will benefit the family by say $2000 (which is highly dubious) that would only improve their annual income to $19,000 or $1583.33/month.

at 50%, thats $791.67 for rent
at $125/person groceries at $600.00

That leaves $191.66 for gasoline, auto insurance, car maintenance, clothing, electricity, heating or AC. In addition there would be co-pay and prescription drug costs, eye glasses, dental costs, school supplies. As the list piles up- what family wouldn't choose to go without health insurance or look to the state to take the burden.

Even if you doubled the income amount there would be precious little room for dreams like home ownership.

Businesses across the country will quickly give up the cost of offering insurance and transfer a supposed equal amount toward salaries thereby benefitting from reduced HR costs. Individuals would see 'huge' increases in their salaries--- or would they?

Take the individual above making $32,000 per year. Let's suppose that he currently gets a benefit from his employer for personal health insurance at $5200/year (most companies offer family coverage at a cost to the employee). Let's also suppose that the company transfers that whole benefit into salary. The employee's income would increase to $37,200 annually, $3100/month or $17.88/hr- an increase of 16.25%.

But in real dollars the take home pay would be much less. The minimum increase to payroll taxes would be the 7.5% for FICA ( $390.00). The annual salary is thereby reduced (optimistically) to $36810. Let's crunch the numbers again.

First we take out the $15,000 for health insurance $21810
Monthly Income $1817.50

Let's assume nothing else changes
rent $791.67
groceries at $125/person $600.00

In this new paradigm the family has $234.17 'extra' each month to cover all the extra costs described above. Probably still not enough to convince them to by the insurance. But the benefit is dependent on the good will of the employer who would be under no obligation to increase salaries in this way.

I would be curious at some point to do the math on the $60,000 senario. It looks dubious.

I already know that the employer cost for my health insurance next year will be about $7800/year. Therefore, straight out of the shoot with no other changes my tax burden increases. In future years, with the cost going up and the benefit remaining the same- with a relatively fixed income my personal tax burden would increase.

Great Plan "W" !!! Who really benefits from this?