by Damozel | This article is a "must read." The biggest threat to economic growth in the next decade will be rising health care costs. (WSJ) With respect to the candidates' respective health care plans, they say:
Barack Obama and John McCain propose to lead us in opposite directions -- and the Obama direction is far superior...
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.
We know these savings are attainable: other countries have them today. We spend 40% more than other countries such as Canada and Switzeraland on health care -- nearly $1 trillion -- but our health outcomes are no better.
In contrast, Sen. McCain, who constantly repeats his no-new-taxes promise on the campaign trail, proposes a big tax hike as the solution to our health-care crisis. His plan would raise taxes on workers who receive health benefits, with the idea of encouraging their employers to drop coverage. A study conducted by University of Michigan economist Tom Buchmueller and colleagues published in the journal Health Affairs suggests that the McCain tax hike will lead employers to drop coverage for over 20 million Americans.
What would happen to these people? Mr. McCain will give them a small tax credit, $5,000 for a family and $2,500 for an individual, and tell them to navigate the individual insurance market on their own.....Those already sick are completely out of luck, as individual insurers are free to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Mr. McCain has proposed a high-risk pool for the very sick, but has not put forward the money to make it work.. (WSJ)
And unlike Obama's plan, McCain's will do nothing to cure spiralling health costs. Read why here.
At The New York Times, Bob Herbert discusses McCain's "radical agenda."
Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?...These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families....
According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.
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. (NYT; emphasis added)
At American Prospect, Ezra Klein writes:
[T[his is the main fact worth knowing, and repeating, about John McCain's health care plan: Its first-order effect would be to take employer health insurance away from 20 million Americans who currently have it. And this estimate is on the low-end. The authors write that it only looks at what employers would do in response to the new tax rules. It does not examine "the number of low-wage workers who might lose employer-sponsored insurance when employers are no longer bound by the nondiscrimination rules, nor do they capture the impact of breaking up existing risk pools." In other words, 20 million plus will lose their employer-based health insurance...And this is examining healthy applicants. The ill are simply denied coverage outright. .
The Wonk Room breaks down the ramifications of McCain's specific policies to highlight their projected consequences. It's a definite eye-opener to see the consequences outlined.
At Grasping Reality, econoblogger Brad DeLong summarizes the effects of Obama's and the rationale behind the change (real change) it is designed to implement:
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.
The lower cost of benefits will allow employers to hire some 90,000 low-wage workers currently without jobs because they are currently priced out of the market. It also would pull an estimated one and a half million more workers out of low-wage low-benefit and into high-wage high-benefit jobs. And more workers currently locked into jobs because they fear losing their health benefits would be able to move to entrepreneurial jobs, or simply work part time. (Grasping Reality)
DeLong also sets out a list or outline of "talking points" with respect to the two candidates' respective plans.
At Obsidian Wings, Eric Martin has a suggestion for the Obama campaign:
Like Paul Krugman who has been beating this drum for some time, I firmly believe that Obama should make accessible health insurance the centerpiece of his domestic platform. Loud and clear. The contrasts between the Obama plan and the McCain plan could not be more stark.
I hope the Obama camp is paying attention. The unravelling of our financial system is revealing the fundamental unsoundness of the principles on which McCain relies for his solutions to economic problems.
It really IS the economy, stupid. Forget all the inane nonsense McCain---who has no new ideas or solutions to offer---is making the centerpiece of his candidacy. When people start seeing how his plans are going to affect them personally, the polls will start to change.
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