Over at Time's Swampland blog, Joe Klein has had quite enough of what he calls "the sewage that Steve Schmidt is shoveling," and has decided to devote his blog space to examining - wait for it - the issues in this presidential campaign.
Hokey smokes, what a concept!
First up, "Senator Honor's" plan to define your health benefits as taxable income.
John McCain wants to tax your employer-provided health care benefits. He wants to replace those benefits with an insufficient tax credit--$2500 for individuals and $5000 for families (the average cost per family for health insurance is $12000).Klein laments the fact that Obama has not made McCain's proposed tax increase on American families a staple of his campaign.
There is a positive, progressive tax aspect to this: wealthier people should have to pay for health insurance themselves, without tax breaks from the federal government.
But make no mistake: this plan will do little or nothing for those who do not have insurance now--unless they are young and healthy--and it may well hurt a fair number of workers, especially unionized workers, who get gold-plated benefits from their employers.
It will certainly do nothing for families with members who have pre-existing conditions or children with special needs--because it makes no provision to regulate the insurers, forcing them to cover all comers at "community" rates that don't discriminate against the people who need health insurance most.
Now, that's Joe Klein you can beleive in!
Of course, John McCain did have pretty sucky health care for 5 1/2 years, so what do I know?
