Senator McCain’s Healthcare Plan
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
By: Taunya English
tenglish@whyy.org
While Congress debates the economic rescue plan, the presidential candidates are looking to remind Americans that healthcare is another pocketbook issue they can't afford to ignore.
This kicks off WHYY's analysis of the election-year health care proposals. Our coverage begins today with Senator John McCain's plan. From the health and science desk, Taunya English reports.
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More special coverage on health, science and the elections.
Taunya's report on Senator Obama's healthcare plan
Transcript:
The senator's plan gives Americans a little more help to buy health insurance.
Senior policy advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin says traditional health insurance subsidies have favored larger companies and people who buy their health insurance at work.
Holtz-Eakin: Senator McCain is trying to push the system into the hands of American families, give them five thousand dollars per family to get private health insurance, and then really force insurers to compete and deliver high quality products to those families for their monies.
Under the McCain plan, individuals would get a $2,500 tax credit. Families would have $5,000 to shop for health insurance.
The campaign expects most people will simply hold on to their regular employer-based health plans. But Holtz-Eakin says the tax credit makes insurance more affordable for unemployed people and others outside the system.
He says McCain's policies will create more options and knock down barriers to competition.
Holtz-Eakin: One of the problems is that we have state-by-state insurance markets, in some cases those very small states, Rhode Island and the like, in effect have no real competition. There's one or two large insurers that have locked up the market and you are stuck with whatever they provide you.
By contrast Holtz-Eakin says Senator Obama's health-insurance expansion plan relies on the creation of another public program, similar to Medicare.
Ms. English, if you watched the VP debate and are following the coverage of the McCain healthcare proposals, I hope you will see that if you had reported fully on the GOP plan, including the proposed changes in the tax treatment of employer based health coverage, as my comments suggested you should have done, you would have been ahead of the news cycle, instead of completely behind it.
just sayin'
sorry, Ms. English, you left out the fundamental change that McCain proposes for the health care insurance system in this country, and highlighted the one (the subsidy) that his campaign wants you to talk about. That's not journalism, that's stenography. Plus, you wasted time you could have used to present a complete picture to parrot Doug Holtz-Eakin's talking points against McCain's opponent. I expected better from WHYY.
Our election-season coverage begins with two short spot news stories introducing listeners to the topic – one with highlights of the McCain plan, one with highlights of the Obama plan. In coming days and weeks, we will have longer feature stories comparing the plans, an opportunity to dedicate more time to different aspects of each plan … such as costs, the candidates' views on mental health parity, etc.
see September NYTimes story at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/us/politics/01mccain.html regarding McCain proposals and taxation
This report is so inaccurate I am sending it to Media Matters. The report, which apparently is based almost entirely on input from the McCain campaign, does not include the fact that the McCain health proposals would treat employer contributions to employee health coverage as taxable income, which is a fundamental change from today's system. The McCain proposals are aimed at pushing people away from employer-based health insurance coverage, but the $5,000 subsidy for family policies described in the report would make only a dent in the average annual cost for family health coverage, which is in the neighborhood of $12,000.
Thus, the WHYY report omits a fundamental and important feature of the McCain plan. In addition, the report serves as a mouthpiece for the McCain campaign by transcribing McCain language on the Obama plan in the final paragraph. If you are going to report on the McCain proposals, cover ALL the major points, and don't let the piece be used as a McCain campaign ad.