[PassedOut]

With the Palin flap subsiding, more articles are appearing on the substance of the candidates' proposals. Here's Bob Herbert's take on McCain's health insurance plan: McCain’s Radical Agenda

Quote

A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.

There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”

For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.

...

While there might be less money in the paycheck, that would not be anything to worry about, according to Senator McCain. That’s because the government would be offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 per family — to be used “to help pay for your health care.”

It seems to me that this plan might expand the cherry-picking of low-risk individuals by insurance companies, thereby making it more difficult for older folks and sick people to afford health care. I hope this issue comes up in the debates.

[jtfanclub]

And why would I want to use it to pay for my health care, exactly?

Why not dump my health care and put the money in the bank?

[kenberg]

First a general comment about Health Plans. Some years back I got a booklet of some 128 pages explaining my options for health care coverage. Already about 100 pages more than I would have liked, there were references to where I could get more information, and Health Fairs where I could go and get information, sort of, from company reps who seemed to be able to, at best, recite what was in the booklet. Zzzzzzzz. Maybe I could just put the plans up on a dartboard.

Now about the taxing of employer contributions. I hope they don't do it but I can see some fairness to it. As part of my retirement package I continue to get the same employer contribution to health care as do active workers. Tax free. Some other poor sucker has to work for the money to pay for all of his insurance and then he pays taxes on that money as well. I can imagine him wondering just why it is that I don't have to pay taxes on the health care contribution from my former employer. I'll take it, thanks.

Of course another way to equal treatment would be to make all health plan contributions, from employer or from an individual, tax deductible. If you have enough medical expenses they are, beyond a point, deductible but unfortunately I have been too healthy to take advantage of that.

On your larger point, that it would be good to have some serious discussion of exactly what McCain proposes, I agree completely. I really think things are pretty screwed up. I haven't had great problems with the system, but I have been mostly healthy and I hope my luck holds. Many are not so lucky, not nearly, and we should give this some thought.

[helene_t]

That sounds like a familiar dilemma. The current system gives tax benefits to a select group of people that work for employers large enough to organize an insurance plan.

Getting rid of that discrimination would destroy the employer-payed insurances because low-risk employees would withdraw since they could get an individual insurance cheaper. I have seen that happening by two employers I worked for in the Netherlands. This means that high-risk employees will have no insurance or an extremely expensive one.

In the Netherlands, this issue was solved partly by forcing insurers to accept everybody, partly by allow insurers to re-insure themselves for certain kind of expensive claims from high-risk patients.

[mike777]

1) Please keep in mind a company with only one person can have an insurance plan.....you do not need ten thousand.
2) Keep in mind an insurance company...can reinsure...with no government permission.
3) reading these posts I think some of you have no idea what a small very small company can or cannot do.
4) A tiny company can have an insurance plan...a tiny company can have a pension plan.
5) a tiny company can have a better plan than a huge company. It is not against the law.
6) I have worked for smaller companies that have much much better plans than say ...Merrill Lynch...Bank of America or Pru Insurance...these are multi billion companies that I was a VP of.

[pclayton]

Since I have been self-employed since 2002, we have had a Blue Cross plan with a $5,000 annual deductible. We have met it once. Our policy for the five of us is around $300/mo. It is a PPO and we choose our own docs. If something terrible happens, we are covered.

I have friends that have 'full-coverage' plans that pay $1,000 - 1,500 / month.

To each his own.

[PassedOut]

My wife and I own two companies and are familiar with the issues. And we don't have trouble meeting our own health care needs. But I think we need to look beyond our own health care needs to consider what is best for the country.

To me, it is a big problem that a substantial group of people in the US does not have health care insurance. I know that uninsured people are treated in emergency rooms, but that drives up the costs for those who do pay. Without regular health care services, people get sicker before seeking emergency care, and that drives up costs even more.

It's bad to have areas where infectious diseases go untreated. Diseases spread to people who do have insurance, again increasing health care costs. The nation's overall productivity is adversely affected as well.

And however you may feel about adults, you cannot justify denying health care to children because their parents do not have insurance.

When we travel in Europe and discuss health care with folks there, most of them think that the way we do it in the US is ridiculous. It's hard to disagree. We pay twice as much here, and our overall health care statistics are much worse.

Again, I'm not complaining about my own situation, and I believe that the posters here are in good situations also. This is not about me. It's about my country. It's about the bigger picture.

[Al_U_Card]

I pay about $1600 per year for government healthcare and about $800 per year for the obligatory private plan that covers LTD, prescriptions and medical out-of-pocket expenses) STD (short term disability and not sexually transmitted diseases) is covered by our employment insurance program, for which I pay another $1400 or so per year. All in all (I reclaim about $600 of the private plan in reimbursements) $3,000 per year seems reasonable for what I have yet to make use of (fingers crossed) for like all insurance policies....you never know.

[mycroft]

$8600/year (Paul Clayton's plan, assuming that you actually use any of the benefits) at $8/hour is 1200 hours, or more than 0.5FTE.

And that seems like a reasonable plan from what I've read about the U.S.

A $5000 tax credit, even in "tax-happy Canada", wouldn't have been completely usable by me until very recently, and I have never had trouble paying my bills. I haven't been rich by any means, but I have always had money around.

And we wonder why the term "out of touch with regular Americans" is ever uttered.