Dan

Calabrese

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October 15, 2008

McCain’s Health Care Proposal is Excellent; So Why Is His Defense of It So Lame?

John McCain’s health care reform proposal was pretty impressive until he demonstrated his complete inability to defend it against a very weak attack. It sort of makes you wonder if McCain really knows how his own proposal works.

Barack Obama is running around saying – and running ads to the effect – that McCain wants to institute a tax on employer-provided health insurance. This is what we used to call a Clinton truth. It is technically true, but designed to mislead.

McCain’s plan recognizes that people’s reliance on their employers for health care benefits is the root of all kinds of other problems. The federal government provides a tax break for health benefits that come from employers, but not for money that individuals use to buy their own. That essentially makes it economically impossible for people to rely on themselves to buy their own health care. You either get it through your job, or you can’t get it.

That’s why people who are between jobs often face a personal health care crisis, and why millions of people who only have part-time jobs have no health insurance whatsoever.

It gets worse. Because just about everything is covered by employer-provided insurance, the cost of it all includes the cost of the huge insurance bureaucracy that’s been set up to scrutinize and hopefully pay the bills. But consumers of health care don’t think about that when they undergo a treatment or service. They just assume insurance will cover everything, so they don’t concern themselves with what it’s going to cost. Then, if the insurer rejects a claim, they find themselves in a financial crisis.

McCain’s plan flips this around. Instead of using a tax incentive to encourage employer-provided health coverage, it shifts the tax incentive to individuals – giving them the deduction so they can buy their own coverage. That way they don’t depend on their employer, and they’re more involved in the process, which should serve as an incentive for them to pay more attention to the costs.

This works. I am self-employed and I have a Health Savings Account along with a high-deductible insurance policy. When my wife and I go to the doctor, they always ask us for our insurance card. When we tell them we are paying for it ourselves, they look at us like we’re from Mars. They’re like the robot from Lost in Space waving his arms proclaiming, “That does not compute!”

Consumer empowerment in health care – actually paying for it yourself – is so alien to health care providers, you’d think you were proposing to pay them with leaves. But those who do pay their own way are a lot more cognizant of what everything costs, and a lot more careful about what they agree to pay for.

This is what McCain’s proposal is designed to fix. It’s very simple. Give the tax breaks to individuals instead of employers. That way people can rely on themselves.

So when Obama claims that McCain is proposing to tax benefits for the first time, he is intentionally misleading you by not telling you the whole story. He is arguably lying. So why doesn’t McCain call him on it clearly and convincingly? It shouldn’t be hard to do. In fact, it provides him the perfect opportunity to talk about how we’re all better off when we can make our own purchases and our own decisions.

“Why do you want to rely on your boss to pay your medical bills?” he should say. “The only reason it works that way now is because of government tax incentives that were put in during World War II. Give the tax breaks to individuals. Power to the people.”

The one time McCain actually came close to this, in the second debate, Obama launched into some lame objection about how this can never work because there could never be enough “consumer protections.” Whenever liberals talk about consumer protections, they are giving away their complete lack of faith in you to watch out for your own interests. The best consumer protection is a consumer who pays attention. Obama doesn’t think you’ll do that, so he wants to deny you the chance to buy your own health care. Besides, the more you rely on someone else to give it to you, the easier it is for him to make the case that that someone should be the government.

McCain’s health care proposal is excellent. And yet he has allowed Obama to paint it as nothing more than a tax increase on your benefits. Millions of Americans believe that’s exactly what it is. That’s how poorly McCain has defended one of his best ideas.

It almost makes you wonder if it really reflects his thinking. Because if it did, he would be able to defend it effortlessly. Obama’s criticism of it is that ridiculous.

But astonishingly, Obama’s criticisms are working. Great ideas aren’t much good if you don’t know how to stand up for them.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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