Steve's barking is the America mathematically challenged?

I was surfing the boob tube the other day when I happened to come across some fellow on one of those business channel, when one of those talking heads said that he was talking to one of his clients who happened to say that he was losing 7,500 dollars in discretionary income because Obama was taking back what he could put into his healthcare flex spending account Now this talking head had a white board ( the new version of a black board) and he started to do the math. He stated that his client told him he needed $10,000 for health care for his family of five. This past several years he was able to put this amount in to his flex account, now the max he could put in was 2,500 dollars. Now the only thing these accounts allow you to  do is to save in pretax dollars so you any money that you put into these accounts is not taxed (Now the bad part of these accounts is that you must use all the money in that year or you lose the money in the account. The money can be used for such things as co-pays, over the counter drugs and various other medical items).
Now getting back the story, lets assume this client lived in NYC and and was at the paid the max tax rate the most he would lose 50%.  Even though I admit that math isn't my strong suit the most this client would lose in discretionary income is 3,750 dollars, this is assuming he couldn't use the 7,500 dollars to reduce his tax bill.

The reason I'm writing this example is because I see and hear things like this all the time, but this one really caught my attention, that I actually thought about it for several days.

It reminds of the story of the merchant who stated that he only makes 1% on his merchandise. I buy it for a dollar and charge 2, only 1%.