Taxing employer-based health benefits would heavily penalize working families with insurance coverage, according to a study prepared by advocates of a single-payer system.

The authors suggest that the study’s result contrast with views held by those in the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and among other lawmakers, who suggest that taxing employer-sponsored health benefits will cost high wage earners the most.

“Most economists and many politicians have claimed that taxing health benefits would hit the wealthy hardest, while sparing the poor. But exactly the reverse is true. For a poor, insured family a tax on their health benefits would take almost one-fifth of their total income,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, one of the authors.

The study, which appeared in the Aug. 19 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, suggested that taxing workers’ job-based health insurance would cost those making less than $100,000 a year about 18.3% of their income.

Using income and insurance data from the 2005 Current Population Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources, the authors say taxing workers’ job-based health insurance would cost people making over $100,000 about 2.7% of their income.

The study was prepared by Himmelstein and Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, professors at Harvard Medical School and primary care doctors at Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. They are co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 16,000 doctors and medical professionals who advocate for single-payer national health insurance

The study’s authors indicate that “a Goldman Sachs executive who enjoyed the firm’s infamous $40,543 health plan got a federal tax subsidy of about $15,367 last year. But that’s only 0.13% of the bonuses received by the company’s four top earners. So though taxing health benefits would spare the uninsured, the average poor family with employer-paid coverage would be taxed at a rate 140 times higher than Wall Street titans.”

Woolhandler, co-author of the study, suggests that politicians “should embrace the only affordable option for universal coverage: a single-payer, Medicare-for-all program.” Woolhandler said a single-payer system would save $400 billion annually by simplifying administration, and that savings would be used to cover those who do not have health insurance.

“We cannot afford to keep wasteful private health insurers in business, and pay for it off the backs of working families,” Woolhandler said in a statement.