Media "Fact Checkers" in the Tank for McCain Health Care Plan

The Washington Post, like other media outlets, continues to give John McCain’s health care plan credit, where no credit is due. Like this misstatement:

Joe Biden mischaracterized McCain's proposal for giving Americans a tax credit to pay for their own health insurance programs in return for taxing the health benefits they receive from employers. He suggested that the average American family would lose around $7,000 on the deal, receiving a $5,000 tax credit in return for having to pay $12,000 for their own health care program. In fact, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center has calculated that most American families would come out slightly ahead for the next decade at least. Higher-income Americans with expensive health care plans would be somewhat worse off after 2018.

Since most employer health care plans are on top of the wages an employee earns, once you take away that benefit for employers and make the employee pay the full amount minus the tax credit, the balance comes out of the total wages earned lowering the take home pay. That’s a loss no matter how you package it. If they assume that employers are going to continue to pay health care insurance, while not getting a tax deduction, they’re crazy loco. For families to be ahead in a decade, health insurance would have to stop increasing premiums. Good luck with that. The problem with current analysis is they are not taking into consideration how dramatically business will change the benefit structure. Their conclusions depend on the current model of employer health insurance obligations.

Dont' get me wrong, I'm not really happy with Obama's plan, since a single payer system is the only real answer. But get this: the Tax Policy Center, in a nonpartisan way, tears apart McCain’s plan for America and praises Obama’s plan. Check it out:

The McCain health care plan raises more concerns than it addresses. The plan would: provide a refundable tax credit that is more valuable to low-income workers than the current tax exemption for employer-based insurance, though the credit is not adequate to make coverage affordable for many; make insurance coverage less accessible and affordable for those with high health care needs; increase coverage among the currently uninsured through the nongroup market but reduce the numberalready covered by employers, leaving about the same number of people uninsured; have a high budget cost, at least in its early years.

In brief, McCain’s proposal would make coverage less accessible for those with health problems, have a high budget cost, but have little effect on the number uninsured. Tax credits would be the same size for all purchasers regardless of income. As a result, they would leave many low-income individuals with insufficient funds to afford adequate health insurance coverage. Health insurance policies would become less affordable over time because the value of the credit would increase with inflation, while the cost of health care has historically grown substantially faster (3 or 4 times).

By deregulating the health insurance market, the McCain plan would clearly decrease the sharing of health care risk. This would result in lower insurance costs for the young and healthy but would increase costs and decrease access for older individuals and those with health care problems.

Obama’s Plan

Our general assessment of the Obama plan is that it would: greatly increase health insurance coverage but would still leave about 6 percent of the non-elderly population uninsured, compared to 17 percent today. substantially increase access to affordable and adequate coverage for those with the highest health care needs, including those with chronic illnesses, by spreading health care risk broadly; significantly increase the affordability of care for low-income individuals; and reduce the growth in health spending through a broad array of strategies.

In short, Obama’s proposal contains the basic components necessary for effectively addressing the most important shortcomings of the current health care system, that is, limited coverage, inadequate risk pooling, and high-cost growth.