Except in this case, it is not employment but a postdoc. ORISE participants are required to pick either the provided health insurance plan or enroll in their own. Also, the money that goes to the provided insurance is not part of the offered stipend--for example, if I am offered a postdoc that pays $45,000 per year, I get $45,000 per year and then ORISE provides the health insurance out of a separate pot of money, to the tune of about $5,000 per year.
If postdocs are required to pay taxes on that extra $5,000 worth of insurance, that is an additional burden of more than $1,000 per year that must come out of the already-taxable $45,000 that we actually receive. Considering that in the case of an employer-provided health plan, the money that goes to the health provider is tax-free, it would seem to be rather unfair to require postdocs, who are employees in all but name, to pay taxes on their required insurance.
