I am a fan of the Wall Street Journal's healthcare blogs. Today Sarah Rubenstein tackled the question about the candidates' stands on employer sponsored health coverage. Check it out.
"When it comes to health insurance, it’s usually easier to have an employer provide it than to buy it for yourself. So when health-policy advisers for Barack Obama and John McCain participated in an online debate on WSJ.com about their bosses’ respective health care plans, much of the focus was on how each plan would affect the employer-sponsored market.
A quick backgrounder: Obama wants private plans and one new government-run plan to compete to sell insurance, with government subsidies for low-income customers. McCain would change the tax treatment of health insurance in a way that would encourage Americans to buy insurance on the open market, eliminating the current bias toward employer-sponsored coverage.
Naturally, each debate participant thought the opposing candidate’s plan would do more harm than good to employer-sponsored coverage. But here’s what they said about their own men’s plans:
David Cutler, Obama’s adviser, said that Obama’s plan will “shore up the employment-based system, not tear it down: lower premiums that firms face through investments in information technology and prevention; create a setting where individuals and small firms can buy insurance the way that large firms do; make sure that insurers cannot exclude firms because one employee is sick.”
Jay Khosla, McCain’s adviser, said McCain’s plan “simply aims to bring equity and choice to our healthcare system, including allowing American families to keep their current coverage. The McCain plan gives American families a $5,000 refundable tax credit ($2,500 for individuals) to give them more choices to purchase portable coverage that would stay with them from ‘job to job’ or ‘job to home.’ His plan directly and comprehensively addresses the single biggest threat to [employer-sponsored insurance] –- rising costs.”"
A quick backgrounder: Obama wants private plans and one new government-run plan to compete to sell insurance, with government subsidies for low-income customers. McCain would change the tax treatment of health insurance in a way that would encourage Americans to buy insurance on the open market, eliminating the current bias toward employer-sponsored coverage.
Naturally, each debate participant thought the opposing candidate’s plan would do more harm than good to employer-sponsored coverage. But here’s what they said about their own men’s plans:
David Cutler, Obama’s adviser, said that Obama’s plan will “shore up the employment-based system, not tear it down: lower premiums that firms face through investments in information technology and prevention; create a setting where individuals and small firms can buy insurance the way that large firms do; make sure that insurers cannot exclude firms because one employee is sick.”
Jay Khosla, McCain’s adviser, said McCain’s plan “simply aims to bring equity and choice to our healthcare system, including allowing American families to keep their current coverage. The McCain plan gives American families a $5,000 refundable tax credit ($2,500 for individuals) to give them more choices to purchase portable coverage that would stay with them from ‘job to job’ or ‘job to home.’ His plan directly and comprehensively addresses the single biggest threat to [employer-sponsored insurance] –- rising costs.”"
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment