Bob Herbert in the New York TImes writes about
McCain’s Radical Agenda. "A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan."
McCain's plan is to get people out of employer sponsored health care plans. He'll do this by taxing what your employer pays for your coverage as income to you. To offset this tax increase he'll give a tax credit of $2,500 for an individual and $5,000 for a family. These will not cover everything. The idea is that you'll leave your employer plan and find a cheaper one in the free market. The problem is they probably won't be cheaper and the healthy people will leave the employee plans, making them more expensive. But the free market will solve all (just like with mortgages).
"This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone."
David M. Cutler, J. Bradford DeLong and Ann Marie Marciarille write in the Wall Street Journal, Why Obama's Health Plan Is Better. DeLong sums it up as follows: "By contrast, Barack Obama's health-care reform plan lifts the health-care cost burden from the backs of America's high-value businesses in five ways: Learning how to eliminate the one-third of costs for services at best ineffective and at worst harmful. Rewarding doctors and hospitals for providing health rather than performing procedures. Pooling individuals and small firms to give them bargaining power vis-a-vis health insurers. Preventing illness through making it profitable to provide regular screenings and healthy lifestyle information, the most cost-effective medical services around. Covering more people and removing the hidden shifted costs of the uninsured by lowering premiums by $2,500 for the typical family, allowing millions previously priced out of the market to afford insurance."
"Given the current inefficiencies in our system, the impact of the Obama plan will be profound. Besides the $2,500 savings in medical costs for the typical family, according to our research annual business-sector costs will fall by about $140 billion. Our figures suggest that decreasing employer costs by this amount will result in the expansion of employer-provided health insurance to 10 million previously uninsured people."
2 comments:
I agree with the goal of removing the responsibility for medical insurance from the employer. The current system locks a person to their company in order to get medical benefits. If you ever get a chronic illness you pretty much have to stay in your existing job.
For business, the onus of health coverage greatly raises the cost of the products they sell. American car manufacturers pay more for health benefits per car than for steel.
Too bad McCain has not thought through what to do after companies no longer provide medical coverage. Tax benefits aren't enough and the dollars mentioned aren't even close to covering insurance for a family. Maybe only 3-5 months of coverage.
I doubt any candidate will propose Universal health coverage. But only a system that excludes business coverage of health care will address the issues for both employer and employee.
I agree. I'm surprised this isn't more of a GOP issue to help US businesses compete. I remember hearing of a company (Toyota?) looking for where to put a new plant. They choose Canada over the US for 3 reasons. They wouldn't have to pay healthcare. The workforce was more educated so training costs would be less. And I forget the third reason.
I'd like to see a universal system, but if that's not yet politically acceptable, the question is how to manage a transition period.
I'd love to see an interviewer ask McCain about this. So you're raising taxes on the middle class on their healthcare. Well there's a credit. But it won't cover everything. ummmm. And what will you do to lower costs? Well we'll look for inefficiencies and correct them. So you'll increase regulation? No we don't do that. So you'll correct inefficiencies how?
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