McCain Aide Trashes Own Health Care Plan

McCain campaign senior adviser Doug Holtz Eakin must be having a hard time keeping that health care plan down, because he threw a little bit of it up in his own mouth earlier today, confessing that McCain's measly $5000.00 tax credit won't get you much more than a box of Kleenex on the individual insurance market. I'm paraphrasing, of course. From CNN:

Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn't abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic policy adviser. "Why would they leave?" said Holtz-Eakin. "What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit."

I'm sure Doug is dying to just let it all out, but at this rate, you'll all be lined up at the emergency room, wearing barrels, with one of those old-timey hot/cold packs on your heads, thermometers jutting from your lips, shaking your fists and shouting "McCain!!!" before he gets it all out.

Luckily, I've done the rest of the work for him. This is a good start. By removing the incentive for employers to provide health care, many of you will end up trading a $12,000 group plan for a $5000 individual market plan. That's like trading $12000 worth of wholesale goods for $5000 worth of retail.

Let's see what you get for your $5000.00. Here's a helpful breakdown of the McCain health care plan, which I like to call:

McCain Learning Curve: Healthcare For Dummies

John McCain gave a speech a few weeks ago detailing his healthcare plan, and I immediately went to work on this story. I got as far as the headline, which I have since changed, and no further.

Although gleeful at the prospect, his plan is so bad, I didn't know where to start. I was like a kid in a candy store.

The candy store is a good metaphor for McCain's plan. Imagine yourself as a child, and you have a huge pillowcase full of Halloween candy. The candy is your health plan. McCain comes along and snatches that enormous sack, and instead gives you a $5 bill and a trip to the candy store. "Now, you have choice! This candy is available to all!" he says, cackling through the glistening remnants of your Tootsie Rolls stuck to his teeth.

The best part is, in order to give you that grandfatherly fin, he had to do away with Trick or Treating.

Let's take a closer, but not boring, look at McCain's healthcare "plan."

Since I borrow the title of this piece from the iconic how-to series, let me see how much I can ape their format without getting a cease-and-desist letter. Hey, it's "homage."

What the Plan Does

(In this section, we explain what McCain's healthcare plan actually does. This means any affirmative legislative action that the plan calls for, rather than less tangible (i.e. Bullsh*t) facets like "recommendations" and "promoting" things. We'll get to those later.)

Establishes a $5000.00 tax credit for families to purchase health insurance.

That's it. That's the entire plan. There are other things in his speech, in his platform, but this is the only specific legislative action in the whole thing. How does he pay for the tax credit? By eliminating the tax break your employer gets for providing health insurance to you. That means your employer will stop doing that.

What does 5 grand get you? I priced out the cheapest plan available from a large insurance carrier, and the 5 G's paid for about 7 months of it.

Of course, that's for tissue-paper thin coverage with high deductibles and copays, $700.00 limit on outpatient care, no coverage for prescriptions, diabetic supplies, chemotherapy, or transplants.

To get a plan that's even roughly equivalent to a decent employer-based health plan, you have to pay more than that. The best one I found was a Traditional plan that had a $2000.00 family deductible, then coverage at 70% up to a $7000.00 out-of-pocket max. There's a $500.00 allowance per year for preventive care.

Compared to most decent, large-group plans, this is a mediocre plan, at best. So, how much are you going to have to make up after that $5000.00 credit? About $59,000.00. That's just for the premium.

Now, McCain talks about controlling costs through market forces, a fallacious idea to begin with, but on what planet will this result in cutting costs by a factor of ten?

What the Plan Says it Does, But Not Specifically

Lowering drug prices through what he calls "safe re-importation," and faster introduction of generic drugs.

Presumably, this will be done through legislation. The problem? It won't work, and even if it could, it will never pass.

Re-importation only works because hardly anyone is doing it. Once it hits the drug companies in the pocketbook, they'll raise prices in the exporting countries, and that will be that.

Dedicate more federal research to caring for and curing chronic diseases.

This could be the only good idea in the plan, but he doesn't say how much more. Federally funded research is crucial to medical advances now, because drug companies, under the current for-profit model, make a lot more money giving Bob Dole a hardon, or Ann Coulter some tears, than curing Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Ensuring Care for Higher Risk Patients.

He'll do this by "working with states" to develop a "best practice model", i.e. a set of guidelines, that states can follow (or not), for a Guaranteed Access Plan. So, the quality of care and p overty of the patient would vary from state to state, like highway potholes and radio stations.

The only other legislation he proposes is something he calls "Tort Reform," or "Preventing You From Suing For Having Your Nuts Removed When You Were Supposed To Get a Colonoscopy." You can sue for medical costs and economic damages (if being nutless hampers your job), but that's it. So, the surgeon will have that much less motivation not to lop the next guy's junk off.

This is predicated on the completely unsupported claim that "frivolous lawsuits" are behind the high price of healthcare. If anyone has some real data, not a story about a hot cup of coffee, I'd love to see it.

Selling You Things You Already Own

This is one of those old-school salesman tricks, trying to add value to your product without actually adding anything of value. "You get the silicon containment system, the rotationally-fastening, re-usable freshness barrier, and the delicious Wonder Emulsion. Now, how much would you pay for a jar of mayonnaise?"

McCain's healthcare plan trumpets a few of these gems:

"Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines."

Huh? Did I miss something? Are Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed eluding "Smokey" so they can bring us back some Cigna from Texarkana? What the hell is he talking about?

Here's my favorite quote from the whole thing. The caps are his. What, did he hire a Teen Beat! editor to write this?

Myth:Some Claim That Under John McCain's Plan, Those With Pre-Existing Conditions Would Be Denied Insurance.

* Fact: (it's even underlined) John McCain Supported The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act In 1996 That Took The Important Step Of Providing Some Protection Against Exclusion Of Pre-Existing Conditions.

Actual True Fact: HIPAA protects you as long as you've been insured for 18 months, with no breaks in coverage longer than 60 days aggregate. Any gaps, and you'll be excluded for those conditions for the length of the gaps, or the pre-existing waiting period (usually 12 months), whichever's faster. Plus, on the individual market, they can just deny you coverage if you are sick. McCain's plan does nothing to address this, aside from chewing it over with some governors. (See "Ensuring Care for High Risk Patients.")

What McCain's Plan Doesn't Do, but Pretends To:

These are bullets in his plan where he wants the government to "promote" this or that, not to fund or mandate. You know, like conservation, improving our image in the Muslim world, and saying no to drugs.

• Guarantee coverage for the uninsurable
• Greater Access and Convenience: Expanding Access to Health Care - is that the problem, not enough clinics at the mall?
• Greater Use of Information Technology - There's already a law being rolled out to do this, HCAPP, but I guess McCain is as quick on the draw here as he was with MLK Day.
• Promoting the Availability of Smoking Cessation Programs - Right, because health insurers didn't figure this one out five years ago.
• He also encourages states to "experiment" with healthcare at various stages in his "plan." Do you want to be Mississippi's guinea pig?

When I tell you that I'm leaving out a hundred dealbreakers in this plan, I'm not exaggerating. If a fifth-grader wrote this, I might be impressed enough to cough up an "E" for effort and some Ritalin to help him focus more.

Having said that, I want to sum up with what I find the most egregious and emblematic assumption that McCain makes in his plan.

John McCain Will Encourage And Expand The Benefits Of Health Savings Accounts For Families. When families are informed about medical choices, they are more capable of making their own decisions and often deciding against unnecessary options. Health Savings Accounts take an important step in the direction of putting families in charge of what they pay for.

In other words, people will only get the medical care that they can afford to. This philosophy, the "cost-sharing model," wants people to make medical decisions based on their out-of-pocket expense, thereby reducing utilization and lowering the cost to the insurer, and not on how sick they are or what their doctor says.

So, you're supposed to ask yourself this: Do I reall need that luxurious chemo treatment, or do I want to pay my whole mortgage? Do I get my blood pressure medicine and my blood thinner, and eat Alpo, or do I skip the BP meds and treat myself to some Beneful?

In his speech, McCain claims that his plan is a step toward truly universal healthcare, and I have to agree with him there. If enough people ignore their symptoms in favor of gassing up for the trip to work, or getting a cartful of groceries, eventually enough of them will die so the only people left will be the insured.

Tommy Christopher co-hosts "Unusable Signal" , on BlogTalkRadio Tues - Thur at 9pm, and Fri, & Sat at 11pm. Click here for the Unusable Signal homepage.