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.
 
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. 
 
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. 
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.