McCain Health Care Free Market Death Trap

Here are the arguments fact checkers and think tanks should be including in their analysis of John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s health care plans for the country.

According to Momocrats.typepad.com, in their article "McCain's Health Care Plan: Making Consumers Suffer More:"

Senator John McCain's health care plan ties the hands of state insurance regulators and puts consumers at risk, according to Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (the former Insurance Commissioner for Kansas for eight years), Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario and Ohio Insurance Commissioner Mary Jo Hudson.

Sebelius warned that the McCain plan proposes dismantling current protections. "McCain outlined deregulating the health care industry the same way the banking industry has been deregulated."

The Obama-Biden campaign agrees, "In keeping with his commitment to do "to the insurance industry" what he's done to the banking industry, John McCain's plan would deregulate insurance and put the interests of insurance companies ahead of American families by eliminating independent reviews of coverage denials and undermining key state protections, such as breast cancer screenings and mandatory vaccinations."

Under McCain's plan, these things would be at the mercy of the insurers, according to Hudson. As a result, there are two major negative outcomes: (1) predatory sales practices perpetrated on senior citizens and (2) many seniors don't know what coverage they'll have year to year. Sebelius said that Senator Barack Obama's plan retains current protections, whereas McCain's plan puts medical decisions into the hands of the insurance company rather than medical practitioners.

Ario said that the McCain plan destroys the group market, which is currently the market that is working. He said that the group market spread health care across a group pool, which keeps rates stable and affordable. "McCain's plan steers us towards the individual market, which is broken, when what we need to do is steer the individual market towards the group market," he said.

33 states have high risk pools, but those only cover approximately 300,000 out of approximately 70 million. "Once you segregate the sick," Ario said, "It becomes too expensive to cover, so the rates get too high and they set caps on the care."

Hudson said that the most troubling aspect to her was that the McCain plan starts by taxing the employer for benefits offered to employees. She said that in Ohio, "920,00 would lose their insurance under McCain's plan, especially in this fragile market." Sebelius said that McCain's plan, which taxes employer benefits, provides disincentives to employers to provide health care plans for employees and also that the credit it provides does not cover the increase in health insurance costs. Since President Bush took office, health care costs have risen 3.7 times faster than the average wage.

"Under McCain's plan, the young and healthy will be okay, until they get sick," Sebelius said. She also said that to keep the story straight, people should understand that Obama has never proposed that everyone should be covered under a government plan, "Senator Obama says that if you have health insurance and are happy with it, stick with it."

San Francisco Chronicle, "Obama assails McCain's health care plan"
Baltimore Sun, "Obama, critical of McCain's health care plan, says he would cancel tax cuts,"
The Associated Press, "Obama: McCain health care plan a bait-and-switch"
Obame-Biden critical analysis of McCain health care plan (Click here for the PDF)
Five Pitfalls of the McCain Health Care Plan (Click here for the PDF)