There’s only one presidential candidate promoting serious change in national health care policy—-and his name isn’t Barack Obama. John Goodman does a good job of expanding on this point in the WSJ:
If you listen only to presidential campaign rhetoric, you might conclude that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama proposed bold new changes for our health-care system, while John McCain is offering only small improvements. If so, you are in for a surprise. Most health-policy analysts believe that Mr. McCain is proposing the most fundamental health-care reform.
At the center of McCain’s plan is his proposal to realign the ill-conceived tax incentives that created and support the current system of employer-based health insurance:
Under the McCain plan, no longer would employers be able to buy insurance with pretax dollars. These payments would be taxable to the employee, just like wages. However, every individual would get a $2,500 credit (and every family would get $5,000) to be applied dollar-for-dollar against taxes owed.
This would create an insurance market in which (for the first time since the current system was devised as a way of avoiding a government-imposed wage freeze) all parties receive equitable tax treatment:
Low-and-moderate-income families would get just as much tax relief as the very rich when they purchase health insurance. People who must purchase their own insurance would get just as much tax relief as those who obtain it through an employer.
This would not only be fairer, it would put downward pressure on the cost of health coverage. Combined with McCain’s plan to create a national health care market, it would cure much of what ails the current system.
Barack Obama is predictably against leveling the tax playing field and opening up the health insurance market. Like all his fellow Democrats, he is for maintaining the wasteful and counterproductive employer-based system.
Obama’s plan is less about change than expansion. He wants to leave the worst features of the current system in place while dramatically expanding the role of government.
If you’re interested in real change, McCain’s your man.
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