Senator McCain publicized his plan for health care (more here). It has so many flaws it’s amazing he brings the subject up.
1. Moving from employer based insurance will provide an incentive for employers to not provide insurance. The employer gets to pocket some or all of what he currently pays for employee insurance–it may be too tempting to pass up.
2. The tax rebate for health insurance will not cover the cost of insurance. As a result there will be an increase in the uninsured in this plan.
“The plan calls for giving $2,500 tax credits to individuals and $5,000 credits to families to buy insurance.”
“The average cost of an employer-funded insurance plan is $12,106 for a family, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy group.”
3. It’s a time-honored tradition in the health insurance business to flush the sick out of the private insurance system. A health insurance crisis in the 60’s brought about coverage for the elderly. McCain’s plan encourages insurers to do just that by increasing competition for the healthy and charge more or reject those with medical problems. This may increase the uninsured and the burden on Medicare, Medicaid, and charitable medical care. Quite a plan!
4. Our health costs are higher in many cases by 100% than other industrialized countries in part because of insurer’s administrative duplication. McCain’s plan does nothing to address this problem and may make it worse.
5. Our costs for technology–drugs, imaging, etc– are significantly higher than anyplace else in the world. The plan does nothing to address this. McCain maintains it will open health care to competition but unless something is done about patent monopoly abuse there will be no improvement.
A plan to provide care for the healthy does not solve our health care access and quality problem.
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