McCain's HealthCare Plan

John McCain's stated goal for our health care system is: "Remove the favorable tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance and provide a tax credit to all individuals and families to increase incentives for insurance coverage; promote insurance competition; and contain costs through payment changes to providers, tort reform and other measures."

There are several aspects to any health care reform package that should be considered. Very broadly:
1. Cost of premiums
2. Overall cost (I.E. hospital bills in emergencies)
3. Availability of coverage
4. Quality of care

Senator McCain doesn't address all of these (which is problem one) but I wanted to talk about what he does address. All of the information here is from McCain's website, Kaiser's health care plan's comparison, and factcheck.org.

1. Cost of premiums: Stated goal is to reduce through competition and provide a tax break of $2,500-$5,000 to those with private insurance. However, as Obama tried to point out in the debate (he did a bad job), his plan really screws over 100 million Americans with employee provided health insurance- the only remotely affordable health insurance the "un-insurable" can get in this country.

One of his plan planks on premiums is: "Reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers’ taxable income." This overwhelmingly outweighs the $2,500-$5,000 rebate because it makes money your employers pay toward your health care taxable income against you. The purpose of this is to discourage you from having health insurance from your employer and get into the market for private insurance, supposedly increasing competition. Unfortunately, beyond this theory of competition, the McCain plan does nothing to actually encourage price drops. Considering that more Americans are insured than ever before (NOT by percentage, by simple volume) and prices go up every year with the cost of health care, without comprehensive reform there is no guarantee, and for that matter, no impetus at all for costs to come down.

On average for a family of four, employers contribute $12,000 per year to the cost of health insurance for those on an employer provided plan. $12,000 minus $5,000 = a $7,000 tax increase per year for almost a third of the country. For individuals it's much less of a punch, for example in my case it would end up being about a $900 increase.

2. As for the cost of care, Obama and McCain have some similarities when it comes to prevention, frivolous lawsuits, and generic drugs. However McCain's overall philosophy on how to bring costs down is still competition. Health insurance companies exist to make money, not to care about people. That isn't a moral fault- as a corporation that's the way it should be- but in this economy that is only serving to eliminate competition and force consolidation we are going to have to enforce price ceilings like any other commodity, a stable of the Obama plan.

3. McCain will leave it up to states to pass laws requiring insurances companies to insure people. This is a horrifically inadequate solution to a downright immoral system where people who went to the doctor for a yeast infection are denied health insurance. Not to mention people who have been CURED of their condition (who ever heard of that right?) being un-insurable.

4. Both McCain and Obama's plans on this seem to be full or jargon; but it basically boils down to new accountibility standards, which is fine with me. I think the biggest issue we have though is emergency room care, particularly in inner cities, which only Obama seems to even (lightly) address with care disparity accountability based on region.

Obama's healthcare plan is far from perfect. But everyone agrees that his priority is getting people health care instead of continuing the trend toward more families not being able to afford it or even qualify for it. The bottom line is that McCain's alternatives won't work- something even writers at the Wall Street Journal agree with.