Health plan not well thought out
John McCain is proposing a refundable medical insurance tax credit. Designed to help Americans not covered by medical insurance to purchase their own health insurance.
On its face, the proposal seems to be an alternative, or at least a stopgap, to national health care. Something good for workers.
But is it?
Perhaps its more an incentive for businesses. To drop their worker's medical benefits.
I don't know whether this nation can afford universal health care. Certainly not while spending a billion dollars every single day on a war in Iraq that was never declared and funded under false pretenses.
But I do know that you can't trust big business or the insurance companies to do the right thing by their employees out of the goodness of their hearts and on their own.
If we as a nation decide that we need to release employers from the burden of providing health care for their workers, let's at least do it the right way. There are enough state-run or government-funded programs domestically and internationally to study. Some are more successful than others.
Health care funding deserves a through comprehensive approach. This sounds more like a political rhetoric creating proposal than anything else.
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1 comment:
Gary,
The move to employer provided health insurance was a product of WWII. The Office of Price Administration had frozen wages so defense industries were hard pressed to compete for workers with wages. Then they got an IRS ruling that benefits such as health insurance did not need to be considered wages.
The self-employed still had to use after tax dollars to buy any health insurance. McCain does propose to remedy this 65 year old injustice.
Having employers in the health insurance loop removes the choice from the person of how much or even if he wishes to purchase the insurance. It also removes the portability. It was a wartime mistake caused by another government blunder. Too bad it has taken so long to even politically propose that it be rectified.
We have a long history the government fixing one mistake by adding another program which then compounds the problem. We never seem content to repeal the original mistake and let the market make the individual adjustments that are warranted.
At present the government mandate to treat everyone regardless of ability or intent to pay is creating many secondary problems such as driving hospitals out of business.
Cheers,
Don
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