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May 02, 2008

McCain's Healthcare Plan Falls Short

By Kirsten Running-Marquardt

Today the national week of action called "Cover the Uninsured Week" has nearly come to a close. During this week groups like Americans for Health Care hosted events across the U.S. that shed light on our nation's broken health care system and suggested ways to cover the 47 million people in this country that go every day without health insurance.

With this in mind, it seems out of place that Senator John McCain would choose "Cover the Uninsured Week" to promote his health care plan around the country, when his plan would actually make it harder to get health insurance.

The Majority of Americans get their health insurance coverage through their employer. But as health care costs have steadily increased, more and more businesses are declining to offer health coverage to their workers because they are being priced out of the system. A new study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called "Squeezed: How Costs for Insuring Families are Outpacing Income," shows that from 2001 to 2005 health insurance premiums have increase 30 percent for American families that receive their health insurance from their employer, while the average income for those families only increased by three percent in the same time period.

Senator McCain's answer to this problem is to make it even worse by eliminating the existing tax break for employers who provide their workers with health insurance. This will discourage employers from providing coverage and leave workers to fend for themselves on the individual market.

Senator McCain argues that creating competition and less regulation within the individual market will lower costs and get more people covered. This is simply not true. Forcing everyone into the individual market will price even more people out of the system. In fact, M.I.T. economist Jonathon Gruber estimates that 1.2 million people would lose coverage if their employer stopped providing it, because they couldn't afford to purchase it themselves. The only people Senator McCain's plan would help are the "fat cat" insurance company CEOs, whose swollen salaries are already topping $32 Million a year.

Would some Americans, as McCain has said, be able to afford coverage through a tax credit his plan would provide, in the event they lost their coverage from their employer? Not if they have a history of illness, or have diabetes or another medical condition. Under John McCain's plan, insurance companies would be allowed to discriminate against anyone with a pre-existing condition. Without regulating this, insurance companies can "cherry pick" the healthy by charging unaffordable premiums or even denying coverage to those people who have any sort of pre-existing condition.

The Senator is criticized for this part of his plan because he himself would be denied coverage on the individual market due to his melanoma 15 years ago. Lucky for him, he is covered by the U.S. Government under the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan.

McCain's health care plan would shift the burden of unaffordable health care costs from the employer onto working families. With insurance premiums rising at over four times the rate of wages in this country, there is simply no way that families will be able to afford coverage.

Though "Cover the Uninsured Week" is a critical week to recognize, Americans for Health Care and its nearly 500,000 Health Care Voters are calling for a presidential candidate who will bring quality, affordable health care to everyone in this country, not just the super healthy and the super rich. Only then would weeks like this be unnecessary.

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