McCain's Health Care

We've been hearing some about health care plans between the two candidates, mostly that Obama wants evil socialized healthcare that will cover everyone and cost you less than you're paying now (due to hospitals having to eat the cost of the uninsured) but McCain is starting to piss off even his big business buddies with his plan.

The New York Times today had a piece on it.

Basically McCain wants to have health insurance benefits taxed as income, so now you're paying income tax on something you don't actually get dollars from. This effectivley drops your take home pay.

Then he says he'll give people a tax credit to cover the difference, but

"For some workers, depending on their tax bracket and insurance costs, the new tax credits would exceed the value of the tax exclusion, making the swap profitable. But with the average employer-sponsored family policy costing [b]$12,680[/b] this year, other workers would find the exchange a losing proposition. They would either have to spend more, reduce their coverage or persuade employers to make up the difference."

His cut is 2500 for a single person and 5000 for married couples, I see nothing here or anywhere else about numbers of children.

I have government subsidized insurance (long story that is another rant about this stuff) and mine costs 3600 a year before deductibles and co-pays. This free market won't give me insurance to the point where they were taking an episode of bronchitis in 05 and calling it chronic and used it as on of their excuses to deny me a bare bones insurance policy.

McCain will force people out of the group plans that employers get and send them out into the free market. However the free market can discriminate for pre-existing conditions and typically charge significantly more for an individual than the collective group the companies get to purchase.

So, McCain wants to lower your take home pay or more likely force you buy insurance on the open market. And anyone who says that their employer will pay them more, the same article states,

"A recent survey of 187 corporate executives by the American Benefits Council and Miller & Chevalier, a consulting firm, found that three-fourths felt the repeal of the tax exclusion would have a “strong negative impact” on their workers. Only 4 percent said they would provide additional pay to fill any gaps."

Employers are not going to pass any savings on to you, they're going to use it somewhere else, most likely making it more likely they'll make payroll. In the meantime your net take home pay vs expenses has just radically changed.