President McCain's promise: 20 million Americans will lose their employer-provided health insurance coverage

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.

This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.

So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.

Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.

So what would happen?

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.

In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/opinion/06krugman.html

[mawilson 2,133]

I'm really looking forward to losing my coverage, thanks.

[LoriLawless 0]

I'm really looking forward to losing my coverage, thanks.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I'm really looking forward to losing my coverage, thanks.

As you should.

Just think of it, we will all get to participate in the world's greatest free market experiment ever!

Life will be nice and idyllic, as if we were characters in a macro textbook.

[kaydee457 13]

Yep, this is certainly a "deal breaker" for me......Personally, I don't think he'd ever get this signed into law as the backlash would be formidable, particularly from unions.......

Let's face it, the majority of Presidents never get their proposals signed into law anyway (I hope!)........

[Marilyn. 340]

this totally would be teh suck

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Yep, this is certainly a "deal breaker" for me......Personally, I don't think he'd ever get this signed into law as the backlash would be formidable, particularly from unions.......

Let's face it, the majority of Presidents never get their proposals signed into law anyway (I hope!)........

Uh, why?

Let the free market rule, we'll all be better off. It's true because a textbook says so.

Oh, and g=0 too.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yep, this is certainly a "deal breaker" for me......Personally, I don't think he'd ever get this signed into law as the backlash would be formidable, particularly from unions.......

Let's face it, the majority of Presidents never get their proposals signed into law anyway (I hope!)........

Well with the bailout its not as though wholesale healthcare reform is really going to be on the agenda in the next 4 years, regardless of the outcome of the election.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

That alone is one reason for me not to vote McSame. The health care plan of his earns him the title McInsane. Only a deluded, completely out-of-touch person could believe that this would actually benefit the middle class Hockey Moms and Joe Sixpacks out there. Is this "plan" one of the biggest scams ever presented to the American people as something good? You betcha.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

He lost me at Joe Six Pack.

Who represents jelly bellied Americans like me?

I'm afraid, no one

[Marilyn. 340]

is this the Joe Six-Pack they are referring to??

[mawilson 2,133]

That alone is one reason for me not to vote McSame. The health care plan of his earns him the title McInsane. Only a deluded, completely out-of-touch person could believe that this would actually benefit the middle class Hockey Moms and Joe Sixpacks out there. Is this "plan" one of the biggest scams ever presented to the American people as something good? You betcha.

Someone said recently that

"If McCain gets elected, Joe's gonna need a lot more than a Sixpack. He's gonna be Joe-Prescription-Drug-Pack."

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

[Chica Yeyé 41]

He lost me at Joe Six Pack.

Who represents jelly bellied Americans like me?

I'm afraid, no one

I'll represent you - just tell me who you'd like "disappeared" and I'll call my TJ hommies.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

He lost me at Joe Six Pack.

Who represents jelly bellied Americans like me?

I'm afraid, no one

I'll represent you - just tell me who you'd like "disappeared" and I'll call my TJ hommies.

:unsure: