MEMO INTRODUCTION from Obama for
America
MEMORANDUM
Saturday, October 4, 2008
TO: Interested Parties
FR: Obama-Biden Campaign
RE: Five Pitfalls of the McCain Health Plan
FIVE PITFALLS OF THE MCCAIN
HEALTH PLAN
John McCain’s “radical” health care plan will undermine the
health care that millions of Americans have come to rely on, and while
shifting costs onto individuals and hurting the budgets of working
families. In five crucial areas the McCain plan will make
America’s already fragile health care system worse, making it more
difficult to solve our nation’s health crisis.
1.
Pays for a
New Tax Credit by Taxing Employees’ Health Benefits for the First Time
in History. John McCain and
Sarah Palin argue that their health care plan is budget neutral, and
that it includes a new $5,000 health care tax credit to help families
purchase insurance. What they don’t tell you is that to pay for their
plan, they will tax the health benefits that workers receive from their
employers for the first time in history. Moreover, McCain’s
health care tax credits would go directly to insurance companies, while
his new tax on employee health premiums would come directly out of
workers’ pockets. This tax punishes those who currently have generous
health insurance, and over time will result in higher taxes for tens of
millions of middle-class families.
- OBAMA PLAN: Offering tax
credits to make health care affordable for all Americans, without
imposing a new tax on employer health benefits. Barack
Obama’s health care plan is fully paid for by reducing health care
costs, eliminating overpayments to HMOs and rolling back a portion of
the Bush tax cuts for families making over $250,000 per year.
2.
Forces at least 20 million people to lose
employer-based coverage. By
taxing employee health benefits, the McCain plan will make it more
expensive for employers to provide coverage. As a result, independent
analyses show that employers will drop at least 20 million people from
coverage and force them to seek insurance in the individual market,
where costs are higher, quality is lower, and coverage more uncertain.
By moving more risk upon the shoulders of individuals, it raises
insurance costs for everyone nationally.Thi And by
forcing millions into the individual market, people with pre-existing
conditions from asthma to cancer will be at risk of not being able to
get health insurance at all.
- OBAMA PLAN: Building upon
the employer based health-insurance system by letting workers keep the
health insurance they have or to purchase a different plan in a new
pool that ensures quality and affordable coverage.
3.
Undermines
the ability of people who do have coverage to get services from cancer
screenings to vaccines. The
McCain plan undermines state laws that require insurance companies to
cover bedrock health care services such as cancer screenings and
vaccines. The plan empowers insurance companies over doctors and
nurses, while making America less healthy. In fact, John McCain
recently explained his intention to deregulate health insurance along
the lines that the banking industry has been deregulated over the past
decade.
- OBAMA PLAN: Protecting
existing state regulations and increasing protections for American
families by requiring health insurance companies to cover all Americans
regardless of health status and outlawing unreasonable rate and fee
increases.
4.
Fails to
take on rising health care costs. The McCain plan has no strategy to contain
spiraling national health care costs. Without the aggressive
investments needed to modernize our health care system, a recent
analysis concluded that McCain’s plan could actually increase
health care costs by $37 billion by 2010.
- OBAMA PLAN: Bringing down
health care costs by $2,500 per year, per family, through aggressive
investments in health information technology, chronic care management,
comparative effectiveness research, and an emphasis on prevention.
5.
Fails to
address the crisis of the uninsured. The McCain health plan does not even attempt
to solve the problem of the uninsured – it barely reduces the number of
uninsured individuals, and it leaves those with preexisting conditions
at the greatest risk of being unable to find affordable coverage. This
lack of commitment to ensuring affordable coverage for all Americans is
consistent with McCain’s record, including his vote last fall against funding the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that would have extended
coverage to 3.8 million children.
- OBAMA PLAN: Ensure that every single American can
purchase quality, affordable healthcare, so that no American is
uninsured.
In all these respects the McCain
health plan represents a continuation of the policies we have seen over
the last eight years, policies that have contributed to health premiums more than
doubling, 7 million more Americans uninsured, and nearly 2 million
more Americans without employer sponsored insurance.