An analysis of the McCain health plan...

[mithriltabby]

...states:

Senator McCain's health plan has three central features: withdrawing the current tax exclusion of employer payments for employer-sponsored coverage (in other words, taxing premiums paid by employers), introducing a refundable individual health insurance tax credit, and deregulating nongroup insurance by permitting the purchase of policies across state lines.

...

Eliminating the tax exclusion would greatly reduce the number of people who obtain health insurance through their employers. This decline would be driven by three factors: the effective price of employer-sponsored coverage would increase, the nondiscrimination rules would no longer apply, and low-risk employees would have less incentive to remain in employer-sponsored groups.

...

For our analysis, we took a middle-range estimate from these studies and assumed that the elimination of the income tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance would cause twenty million Americans to lose such coverage. We note, however, that the effect could be much larger.

Or, to put it in more personal terms: John McCain wants my wife to die in agony.

Senator McCain, do you remember that promise you made to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell? Just to make sure, why don’t you carry him in?

Comments

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

I am desperately trying to think of places where your razor pen could create an editorial letter, an ad for Obama, or some other message for letting people know what this means. Unfortunately, I'm not much of an activist and MoveOn.org and NDC are the only people I can think of. But I daresay that either of them (or both) will happily attack this, and might like specific anecdotes (with names and serial numbers filed off) to-- as you say-- put it in more personal terms.

Personally, I'm horrified that he's not only moving away from better health care, he's trying to cripple what we've got. AND I'm horrified that I hadn't already heard this through any other channels.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Remember: a free market economy regulates itself!

Yeah, I don't buy that bullshit, either.

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

Remember: a free market economy regulates itself!

Yeah, just look how well the bankers are doing right now!

I swear, the voter on the ground just doesn't matter to McCain or his advisers.

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

Actually, fairly well. They are reacting to an excess of credit (note, caused by Federal policies) by creating a lack of credit. Yep, big companies are going away - that's the cost of doing business.

You'll note what happened when the Japanese tried to bypass that little rule a few years back. Their economy STILL hasn't recovered, and that was the early 90s.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

He wants her to pull herself up by her own bootstraps, like good Amurrrricans always do. (Never mind that McCain has spent his entire life on the government payroll, except for a couple years working for his rich father-in-law.)

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't want that much in a health plan. All I want is the same health plan that McCain gets as a congressman. that's not too much to ask, is it?

Personally, I'd like to have McCain be put on that plan, and see how well he fares. If he can get all of his healthh insurance needs taken care of in $2500 dollars, I'd be impressed.

McCain's throw them out to the wolves is a cruel joke.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Your wife and my husband. Even with Medicare/HMO Kaiser coverage, this latest round of illness is going to cost us plenty. We are paying more and more for what? Higher Co-Pays, higher deductibles, and less coverage.
And we won't even go into the joke they call Drug Coverage in the Medicare system. We are approaching the donut hole. Ugly.
I'm just glad he is on Medicare, with his chronic problems he is uninsurable any other way.

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

Turns out he was writing about the first of two analyses of McCain's and Obama's health plans.

McCain:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.27.6.w472/DC1
(short version - it's vicious, and expect to see reduced coverage)

Obama:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.27.6.w462/DC1
(short version - we couldn't afford it BEFORE handing $1.3 trillion to Wall Street)

Such wonderful choices, eh?

[mithriltabby]

I’ll take the guy with unworkable plans and a reality-based economic team over the guy with unworkable plans and an economic team full of zealots who think Milton Friedman is the Prophet of God any day of the week.

[chuckles48.livejournal.com]

Ummm, "a reality-based economic team"? That would include the former CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you realize. And you're dissing the guy who co-sponsored (twice) the regulatory efforts to try to prevent the mess we're now in.

Not saying either one is a _good_ choice, mind you.

[mithriltabby]

There’s no evading heavy influence from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in either campaign; look at all the money being contributed to McCain’s campaign manager. The Economist refers to Obama’s economic team as “impeccably centrist”; McCain’s economic guru is Phil Gramm, who enabled the Enron-sponsored rolling blackouts and removed oversight of derivatives, which was one of the big enabling factors for the subprime meltdown. Given that the guy who wrote the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 said “it lacked a champion in the Senate”, I’m not inclined to give much credit to John “I’ve always been for less regulation” McCain.