Presidential Candidates’ Healthcare Plans Compared
The health care plans proposed by John McCain and Barack Obama come under scrutiny by the Tax Policy Center and Health Affairs. The Wall Street Journal offers a summary of the two critiques:
“Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s health-care plan would make only a small dent in the ranks of the uninsured, at best covering about five million more people, two new reports conclude. Democratic nominee Barack Obama would cover more people — eventually adding about 34 million, according to one of those reports, by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.”
Sen. Obama’s plan would be costly, the center concluded: $1.6 trillion over 10 years. Sen. McCain’s would cost nearly as much: $1.3 trillion over the same span. The center doesn’t give either campaign credit for initiatives to reduce the cost of health care.
Writing in Health Affairs Joseph Antos, Gail Wilensky and Hanns Kuttner say the Obama plan amounts to a significant amount of new regulation, driving up the cost of insurance. In another Health Affairs article, Thomas Buchmiller, Sherry A. Glied 2, Anne Royalty and Katherine Swartz argue that higher administrative costs in the open market will make coverage more expensive and less generous under the McCain plan.
Also in Health Affairs, Mark V. Pauly combines elements of both plans to create a compromise proposal:
“Useful combinations include the presence of both public and private options and a system of credits that are more generous for lower-income households (Obama) and creation of a system of public subsidies that is incentive-neutral across individual and group insurance, curtailment of the current tax subsidy to high levels of coverage for high-income households, and the use of targeted high-risk pools and guaranteed renewability rather than community rating (McCain).”
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