Health care is a big issue with me. I think a staggering number of people are literally (not figuratively, literally) dying in this country, more than we imagine, because of the high cost of health care.
When John McCain first started talking about tackling health care, I thought he sounded like he had a simple goal: To promise something that would sound like reform but would, in fact, change nothing. After all, we can't let anything prevent pharmaceutical and insurance companies from making as much as possible. Now, I feel like his goal has shifted. It actually seems to be to make health care more expensive for the lower and middle class.
His proposal would reclassify employer-paid health benefits as income on which workers would have to pay taxes. This is the kind of thing that if a Democrat suggested it, we'd be hearing about how those damned Liberals just live to raise taxes on everyone. McCain counters that everyone would receive a refundable tax credit to help pay for this increased cost. Sometimes, he tries to make it sound like you'd come out even on the deal with the tax credit paying the entire increase…but of course, that wouldn't make any sense. Why even change the tax structure if it's going to be revenue-neutral?
Obviously, it's not. Obviously, it's going to cost people even more at a time when 50 million Americans already can't afford it. Bob Herbert says the idea here is to get rid of employer-paid health plans so that everyone will have to buy from private companies. I don't know if that's a conscious motive but it sure sounds to me like the result of this will be that laborers will be paying more and getting less in the area of health insurance. Just what we don't need.