From the Wall Street Journal:
For someone running as the tribune of “change,” Barack Obama showed again in last night’s debatethat he sure is comfortable with the status quo on health care. He continued his recent assaults on John McCain’s health reform even though it is precisely the kind of plan that someone of Mr. Obama’s professed convictions ought to support. …
Perhaps Mr. Obama is so agitated because Mr. McCain’s proposal is highly progressive. The Republican wants to readjust the subsidies that Congress channels into health coverage for business so that lower- and middle-wage workers aren’t shortchanged, as they are now. …
All in all, workers would come out ahead with the McCain plan. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, the average taxpayer would see his tax bill drop by $1,241 in 2009. On average, lower-wage workers have more limited coverage as part of their compensation, mostly from small- or medium-size businesses. But the more generous the employer health plan, the more the tax subsidies increase. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the current employer benefit is only worth between $600 and $3,000 for people making under $100,000. The upper-income brackets save between $4,000 and $5,000. …
But don’t take our word for it. Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser agrees with the McCain critique of the current system, or at least he once did. “This massive program of tax breaks is ineffective and regressive, wasting money on those who have health insurance while doing little for those who can barely afford it and nothing at all for those without it,” wrote Jason Furman in 2006 in the journal Democracy. Before he joined the Obama campaign, Mr. Furman championed a health reform that relied on many of the same tax tools as Mr. McCain’s.
Read the rest here.
Maybe Obama is so wedded to employer-provided insurance because unions can use it for negotiation, and unions just happen to vote democratic.
(via John Goodman)
