McCain's CRAZY insurance plan

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, and the thing that pushed me over the edge was this email about John McCain and what he wants to do to our nation’s healthcare system.

THE BIASED BULLCRAP: I wish I could find the original email, but I must have deleted it. In a nutshell, the email was all this gloom and doom about how McCain wants to disable employers from providing health insurance to there employees, tax your income BEFORE your health insurance premiums come out, and basically force you to go to the marketplace to get a personal plan…. And the prices of personal plans would go up tremendously because insurance companies are just as much crooks as credit card companies. Oh, and it stated that he thinks people are OVER-insured and that he would push people to use these new “Health Savings Accounts” (umm… HSAs have been out for a good while now… DUUH).

THE TRUTH: Here is a quote taken from the sourc listed below “Both sides also envision a world where employers play a much smaller role in medical benefits” ~1 CNN. McCain wants to put the power of CHOICE into the hands of the consumer. This is good for those of us who are capable of making an educated decision on how we want to handle our healthcare, what kind of expense we can handle, etc.

This part here was found on source 1 (money.cnn.com):

McCain's main pillar is the elimination of a tax break that employees receive if their employer provides their health care. That may not sound like a shocker, but it is. The exclusion dates from World War II, when the federal government imposed controls on wages, but allowed companies to compete for workers by offering tax-free health benefits in lieu of pay. The law is largely responsible for the nightmarish patchwork of corporate-provided medical plans we enjoy so much today. Employees and their unions demanded richer and richer packages, and employers complied, since they could buy far more benefits for their employees than workers could buy with after-tax dollars on their own. Americans have paid a steep price, however, by sacrificing their raises as corporate insurance bills exploded, never more so than now

Sounds much prettier than the email I received. The biased bullcrap email made it out like “Oh the government wants MORE of our money!!” I HATE emails, websites, and people who have this whole “The government is OUT TO GET US” philosophy stuck in there heads. Come on people… get a mind of your own.

So yeah… people would be more responsible for buying there own health insurance premiums. Many people think that because the way things are right now, it is very hard to get a personal health plan at a reasonable rate BECAUSE there is very little competition (and in some areas, none at all). There are a few big companies out there offering personal plans at SOMEWHAT reasonable prices… the rest focus on employer-based business. If there were more COMPETITION in the “free market” (AKA capitalist market) then prices would be driven down.

Now if we’re responsible for this huge expense, how in the hell are we going to pay for it?? Employers won’t have to pay for your huge benefits package… so it’ll go in your paycheck (if you have an ethical employer). You’ll be paid more, therefore having more money to pay for your healthcare. Plus you’ll get a federal tax rebate (see cnn source for more info on that) of $2500 for individuals and $5000 for families.

Then there’s the part of the email that talks about how he’s pushing these high deductible catastrophy-only insurance policies coupled with these CRAZY HSAs…. This on the same source explains that a little further…

So what types of policies would they buy? Employees (and their families) with corporate plans - about 150 million Americans - would probably rush toward high-deductible, low-premium insurance, and use what's left over to pay cash for routine procedures. They would couple those high-deductible policies with Health Savings Accounts, which allow families to put away up to $5,800 ayear, before taxes, for medical expenses. Those plans cost about $10,000. That's not a huge saving from the typical $12,000 corporate plan, but it's a start. More than four million Americans already have HSAs, and the McCain plan would make portable, high-deductible plans the product of choice for a new generation of healthcare consumers. (1~ CNN)

I’m not a democrat, and since my time is limited, I’ll just tell ya this…. If you’re interested in the democrats ideas/plans on healthcare, go to the CNN website below. This entry is basically defending the biased bullcrap email I received.

Source 1- http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/10/news/economy/tully_healthcare.fortune/?postversion=2008031109