McCain Health Care Plan Endorsed by Obama Advisor But Not Promoted by McCain?
September 6th, 2008 at 04:17pm Kevin Patrick
Apparently this is true.
The esteemed economist, Greg Mankiew, has another of his excellent posts on his blog outlining the Post-partisan Health Policy of John McCain:
“The PEP blog draws our attention to this trenchant analysis of health policy:
The most promising way to move forward in all three dimensions – coverage, cost, and long-run fiscal situation – is to replace the employer exclusion with a tax credit, a step that has been proposed many times before (e.g., Butler 1991 and Pauly and Hoff 2002). Firms would still be allowed to deduct the cost of their contributions to employee premiums, just as they can deduct wages and other expenses today for the purpose of calculating taxable income. But workers would now have to include employer contributions to health insurance in their earnings for the purpose of calculating taxes (precisely which taxes is discussed below). In exchange for, workers who purchased qualifying insurance would get a refundable tax credit. Qualifying insurance would be along the lines proposed by the President in his standard deduction for health insurance, including limits on out-of-pocket payments, coverage of a general range of medical care, and guaranteed renewability by the provider (Treasury 2008).
“The PEP blog then points out,
This is a pretty fair description of the McCain health care plan. The funny thing is, this is not be found in McCain campaign literature or on his senate website, but rather in a paper written by Jason Furman, Obama’s Economic Policy Director.
All true.”
Mankiew goes on provide the similarities to the McCain plan and speculates that “most health economists would endorse the Furman-McCain plan.”
I think McCain may be missing a good opportunity here.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008
10 Comments
1. Magnum Serpentine | September 6th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Proves to me that McSame has no health care plan even to the extent that he rejects a good health care plan and that his true plans are to take from the poor give to the rich and support a VP who is under massive Ethics investigations in her home state.
2. kmg | September 6th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
The other night neocon said he had a poster’s email address and was tracking him down. Today he asked Kimberly if she had received his email. Neocon appears to have access to the email addresses of people who post here.
Back in June, someone with the email address of rooboru@aol.com sent harassing emails to a poster, Chris. What rooboru sent Chris sounds a lot like how neocon posts. When Chris posted here complaining about receiving the email, his post was deleted and he was banned.
Is neocon rooboru?
3. kimberly4victory | September 6th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Actually, Neocon gave me his email on a post and I sent him in an email. Just wanted to clear that up.
As far as McCain’s healthplan, I am sure the details will come up during the debates. I would hope he is talking about it at the rallies.
4. Danish Artist | September 6th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
“Proves that McSame has no health care plan….”
Magnum Stupidity….
“This is a pretty fair description of the McCain health care plan. The funny thing is, this is not be found in McCain campaign literature or on his senate website, but rather in a paper written by Jason Furman, Obama’s Economic Policy Director.’
Follow the links.
This prove to me that you are an Obamaton. A complete waste of bandwidth on the internet. In other words, it proves to everyone here you are a complete idiot, a mouthpiece, an empty suit….just like your candidate.
5. Wellington | September 6th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Ok, let’s see:
so the poor and middle class families don’t hold many dividend paying stocks. Hmmm….
He wants to finance (not build more debt) one way by increasing the dividend income to 20%.
He will not affect the poor, he will not affect a large part of the middle class. The middle class (you know, the people who recycle cans and stuff), will get a tax break of $1000.
So he’s actually not going to hit the rich (who hold more dividend paying stock) with a meager 5% increase. Cry me a river. As your hero Phil Gramm says…quit yer whining.
Looks to me like he ain’t raising the income tax on the rich and giving corporations a tax break, to me, it’s the socialism you’ve been talking about. To corporations not the people.
And he ends the article with this kicker, (how he puts this together is beyond me.) O’s raising the dividend tax to 20% and giving middle income taxpayers a break.
More right wing Orwellian double speak.
Spare me the B.S.
6. Wellington | September 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
you know Matt and Mark, you really should have an edit feature. If a grammatical/spelling error is made we cut go back and fix it quickly and easily and see that the post has been edited.
It’s a modern world fellas, catch up.
Beaver Cleaver done graduated.
It would chew less bandwidth and require less (this is what I meant posts). Your running out of bandwidth now.
7. Magnum Serpentine | September 6th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Danish Stupidity,
Once again.
I am writing Hillary Clinton’s name in this November.
You know they let you do that. I do not support McSame or the Pretender Obama.
8. Danish Artist | September 7th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Magnum Stupidity,
It still does not answer to the fact that you can’t read and are just a mouthpiece, unwilling or not.
But you are here just to regurgitate the bullsh*t as evidenced by your empty and mostly irrelevant posts.
I can’t believe you are going to allow McCain to be elected. I do believe that you will stop at nothing to risk McCain to become President once you have the ballot in your hand.
Still that is irrelevant to what you erroneously wrote. You have been called on it and as usual your response lacks intelligence. Go to the dailyKos or the democraticunderground. There your unintelligent posts will mingle among the rest and no opposition can respond, since they ban anyone who does not toe the line.
9. Eric T | September 7th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Wellington- you said this
“Looks to me like he ain’t raising the income tax on the rich and giving corporations a tax break, to me, it’s the socialism you’ve been talking about. To corporations not the people”
If this is true this is where change needs to be. A corporation doesn’t eat, breathe, it would kind of be like giving money to a TV, car, microwave. I think good change would be tax breaks for small/ mid sized business. Family businesses, that get a bigger break for the more people they employ.
Huge Corporations have been getting the gravy for a while. Smaller/family owned businesses can not compete. And are destroyed. This I think this would be good change.
Maybe some corporations that are struggling that employ lots of people, could use a break too.
10. JS | September 7th, 2008 at 9:25 am
the way to fix the healthcare problem in the USA is to reform health insurance companies….they take over 30% of the money we spend on health care as profit, 19% more than the average worldwide…out of 3 trillion dollars we spent in 06, health insurance companies kept over 900 billion for themselves…which is why we have problems…during the last decade…premiums have skyrocketed…shutting out around 50 million people from proper health care….
the government make the US Post office…we should now make a health insurance company that is also non profit…that will be separate from the Govt,….with accountability and responsibility…to the people….and not to pharmaceutical companies and boards of directors scheming to squeeze more and more money from a public service like health care….
when the cash stops flowing into thier coffers…health insurance companies will get honest with us and finally compete in an open market where market value has true meaning…