The plan calls for taxing health-care premiums for families coverage worth more than $335 a month.

In 1996, employers' health-care premiums rose less than 1 percent, KPMG reports.

In the same period, West argued that Manitobans should pay health-care premiums instead of paying for health expenses through general taxation.

Management agreed to binding arbitration on the issue of health-care premiums and agreed to joint committees to study workloads in some of its offices.

Self-employed people would be able to deduct all the costs of their health-care premiums from their taxable incomes.

To brake cost increases, the President's plan would limit the amount that health-care premiums could rise each year.

Even so, Maxicare's health-care premiums will rise an average of 20 percent beginning Jan. 1.

Sky-high health-care premiums figure prominently in conventional wisdom about why America can't compete in world markets.

According to a study last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Hewitt Associates, health-care premiums have jumped 87 percent since 2000.

The interest deduction is one of the biggest breaks, right behind health-care premiums paid by corporations, which are tax-free to the employees.