The Dallas Morning news has a biased piece on the two different approaches to health care by McCain and Obama:
Democratic health care proposals may have gotten more attention during the primaries, but Republican John McCain’s plan just might be more revolutionary.
The GOP nominee-to-be wants to tax workers on the value of the insurance they receive from employers.
At the same time, everyone would be offered a federal tax credit to help them pay for insurance – whether a company plan or one purchased on their own. Buyers could subtract up to $5,000 from their federal tax tab come April 15. Or they could simply sign over the credit to an insurer in order to purchase coverage.
The goal, Mr. McCain said, is to give those without company-provided health insurance the same tax advantages as those with coverage through work. It would also encourage individuals to shop for less expensive insurance, his supporters say, pushing prices down.
In contrast, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says he wants to expand Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, and require employers to either provide health insurance to their workers or contribute to a newly created public insurance program.
Detractors to the McCain tax credit proposal are convinced that being conservative about the status quo is a good thing (when clearly the system is unsustainable) and that equal subsidy of individual insurance is no good in the long term. "Progressives" and special interests are lining up to fight the proposal, though, and notice the language:
"If health benefits became taxable income, yes, I do think that more people would opt out," said Andrew Webber, president and chief executive of the National Business Coalition on Health, a nonprofit group of employer-based health care coalitions, including the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health.
Bob Queyrouze, who oversees benefits for 1,200 workers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, calls Mr. McCain’s plan "radical." "Long term, it would be destructive to the system," Mr. Queyrouze said.
"Radical" is the same terminology Adam Searing uses. He gets his talking points from progressive headquarters in Berkeley, CA or whereever. Why progressives want to cling to the WWII employer-based system is clear: it will keep prices going up. If prices continue to go up, they’ll eventually be able to foist fully socialized medicine on the American people by calling the current half-arsed government system "free market" when it most certainly is not. And it’s a clever strategy. The left fears the power of the market. They won’t get their precious single-payer (socialized) system unless it preserves the status quo. But the status quo is conservative… Look at what the pot is saying about the kettle today.
For more on why tax credits are a great idea, read more here (especially here and here).
-Max Borders
Did you see the Bunk study stating 2/3 of doctors in America want National Health Care. The doctors who did this study also conducted one in 2002 and found that the majority of doctors did not want national health care, the problem with this is that the 2 question surveys drastically differ in their 2nd question. I found this article, 60% of Doctors Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan, It’s worth a read.