Phillip Klein points out an interesting development in the health care debate:
When it comes to health care, it’s actually conservatives who are offering change, and liberals who are offering more of the same failed policies (only on a much grander scale).
McCain’s health care plan calls for the elimination of the horribly inequitable and inefficient employer-based health insurance system. Obama, the ostensible progressive, is for sticking with the status quo:
The Obama campaign has taken to calling John McCain’s health-care plan “radical” and Barack Obama himself declared during Tuesday night’s debate that it would “lead to the unraveling of the employer-based health care system.”
If ever a system needed “unraveling” this is it:
The current system discriminates against those who seek to purchase their own health insurance, because it only offers a tax exemption for those who get insurance through their employers. As a result, many self-employed Americans cannot afford health insurance, even though their taxes help subsidize others.
McCain’s plan would go a long way toward fixing this situation:
McCain’s plan would make the system fairer by ending the tax exemption for health-care purchased through one’s employer and replacing it with tax credits of $2,500 for each individual and $5,000 for every family.
Meanwhile, Obama wants to exacerbate the problem:
Obama would not only maintain the current system of regulation, but he would implement onerous regulations at the national level.
I thought “progressives” were for, like, progress. Did I miss something?
Comments 1
Catron, I can’t believe you support a policy that most people can’t afford.
1- McCain wants to end employer-subsidized health care, or, absent that, tax the benefit as income.
2- In exchange, he would grant a $2,500/$5,000 tax credit (payable to the insurance company, not the taxpayer).
3- A decent health insurance policy costs a family at least $12,000 for benefits similar to what is received from the typical employer.
4- That leaves a family paying at least $7,000 more out of pocket, per year, than under the present system.
5- Many families who are currently insured, thanks to employer-subsidized health care, would be unable to afford the additional out-of-pocket cost of coverage.
6- Insurance companies would be incentivized to move to states with the least regulation and least mandatory comprehensive coverage, just as the credit industry did in order to maximize chargeable interest rates in the 80s and 90s.
7- McCain’s plan doesn’t require coverage for pre-existing conditions, nor does it require a company to accept all comers.
8- The cost of health care may decline for the young and healthy, but older workers and those with chronic illnesses would see their premiums go through the roof.
9- Some analysts estimate 20,000 people would lose coverage under McCain’s plan, while 21,000 new customers would gain coverage. That’s only a net of +1,000,000 people covered.
10- Deregulation didn’t work well for the banking industry; what makes you think it would work any better for the insurance industry?
Posted 10 Oct 2008 at 5:15 pm ¶Post a Comment