At the risk of distracting from the more interesting thread, I feel the need to stick my nose in here.
I think it's a great idea, but then I believe that a more free-market is the answer to our health care cost problem and our access problem.
I'm not going to refute the whole op-ed but I will address the highlighted sections as they seem the most important to you.
NYT said:
"For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on. "
Why is this a bad thing? Employees make more money, and you don't have to spend time researching and selecting insurance options for them (although you retain the right to do so). Would you object to paying workers your share of their SS/Medicare taxes? It's essentially the same money and would be less bookkeeping for all involved.
What makes you think that all of your employees want the insurance that you select for them? What if they want more coverage, or less? Do you provide all of your employees with transportation to work and take the costs out of their pay, or do you allow them to spend their pay on the means of transportation they desire?
NYT said:
"It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf"
Do you really not know how much you pay for coverage on each of your employees? I find this hard to believe.
NYT said:
"According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”"
I agree that the nongroup market is the weakest segment, because there has been no incentive to improve it. With this plan there will be. With millions of new customers insurers will compete to offer policies that individuals want instead of employers. Just like
every other insurance market. High cost sharing is not a bad thing, what is the deductible on your auto insurance again? Limited covered services can be bad, but competition can fix this. People will only lose benefits if they are no longer willing to pay the premium for them.
Objective Voic said:
"McCain's plan would ultimately create a financial hardship on American families by essentially forcing them to pay for their own health care and place little responsiblity on the private health care system to be accountable for the services, premiums or fees they charge"
This is a tragic misrepresentation. While people will be paying for their own care, they will be getting higher wages with which to do so AND a tax credit (not a deduction) to do it with. You are misinformed about who can receive the credit as well. Everyone will receive the credit, and those credits will be sufficient to purchase a minimal plan on their own before taking into account the increased pay. "For example, according to McCain’s campaign, a typical worker in the lowest tax bracket could expect to pay about $1,500 in taxes and keep the remainder of the $5,000 tax credit." [1]
Of course the private system will be held accountable for services, premiums and fees. If the customer is not happy they will move to a different provider. What are you options now if you are unhappy with your employer provided insurance?
bandaidwoman said:
"As an employer I lose my tax benefit by providing employee insurance"
And instead you pay your employees higher wages. "Since on average employers pay $8,824 for a worker’s insurance, that is roughly what workers could expect to receive. The tax credit merely offsets the extra taxes that the worker would otherwise have to pay if he or she received that $8,824 as additional wages." [1] Are you so sure they'll complain?
bandaidwoman said:
"For the public this essentially amounts to a hell of a huge income tax hike"
No it doesn't. "The McCain campaign suggests that a worker in the top tax bracket whose employer contributes more than $14,285 per year toward paying for his or her insurance could still end up with a tax increase under this trade-off. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,
just 6 percent of workers are employed by companies where the average employer contribution exceeded $14,000, and not all of those workers are in the top tax bracket.
Nearly all lower- and middle-income workers would end up better off." [1] (emphasis added)
bandaidwoman said:
"This also means my healthy employees will bail and take a chance on individual health insurance market or forego insurance altogether while my employees with preexisting conditions and chronic disease (who are high utilizers) remain and now my emplyee coverage is dominated by high risk, high use patients and that just jacks up my premiums even more."
Your healthy employees get screwed less and your risky employees have to pay for their higher risk. Your healthy employees will end up better off should they become sick later as they've had more money to save in an HSA until then (or pay extra for a plan with better preventative medicine access). Your already risky employees do get the short end of the stick, but frankly subsidizing inherit risk is not my idea of 'fair' to begin with.
[1]
http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp104.pdf
J