Obama v. McCain....how do healthcare plans stack up?

In addition to the general economy, business owners and managers want to know what will happen to their healthcare plans under a McCain administration or an Obama administration. Jacob Goldsteins blogs about this very subject in his blog on the Wall Street Journal website.

"....... nobody really knows how the Obama or McCain health plan would work in the real world. But some smart people have taken some educated guesses. In her healthy consumer column today, the WSJ’s Anna Wilde Mathews wades into the fray and returns with some figures.
Among families making between $50,00 and $149,000 annually, roughly 40% would save more than $2,500 a year on health costs under McCain’s plan in the short term, according to an analysis by the Lewin Group, a health care consultancy.
Those who come out best could be people who are young and healthy — those who are pretty cheap to insure. People who are older, or who have a history of health trouble, could have a harder time under the McCain plan.

Most American families in the short term would save money on health insurance or see little effect under the Obama plan, the group said. Among households earning between $50,000 and $150,000 a year, more than 60% would see health-insurance costs decline by $250 or more.
Low and moderate-income people might qualify for new assistance under the Obama plan. And those with health troubles would benefit from a rule that would require insurance companies to cover all comers. On the other hand, healthy people who don’t qualify for subsidies could see their insurance costs rise under the plan.

What happens in the long term is anyone’s guess. The Tax Policy Center, which is affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, projected the Obama plan would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, and the McCain plan would cost $1.3 trillion. Lewin Group had different figures putting the cost at $2.1 trillion for McCain’s plan and $1.2 trillion for Obama.
The candidates say they are prepared to pay for the plans, but they rely heavily on cost savings gained from new efficiencies. And, as anybody who pays attention to health care knows, it’s easy to point to inefficiencies, but hard to realize significant cost savings.

Bonus Dollars: McCain has said folks who have a hard time buying insurance on the open market would get help from something called the Guaranteed Access Plan. McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin told the WSJ that the plan could cost the feds $15 billion to $20 billion a year. Other funding would come from states and insurers. The Lewin Group estimates that the program could for the federal government would rise each year, to as much as $33 billion a year after a decade."