Yesterday, the American Health Line reported on a new Economic Policy Institute report that claims the “health care proposal announced by Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain” would “prompt many employers to drop health insurance for employees.” 

According to report authors Josh Bivens and Elise Gould, “as many as 27 million of the 165 million U.S. residents who have employer-sponsored health insurance would lose their coverage under the proposal.”

While Bivens and Gould concede that the current system is “far from perfect,” it does “pool and spread risk,” whereas the McCain plan would not.  They concluded that “kicking away the foundations of this system should only be done if there is a well-crafted alternative.”

That “well-crafted alternative,” of course, does not exist. Just the other day, the New York Times reported that officials in pro-business organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, were voicing concern about Senator John McCain’s healthcare plan.
 
Their main gripe?  Senator McCain’s plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits from income taxes, would “accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance.”
 
The executive vice president for government affairs at the Chamber of Commerce, R. Bruce Josten, was quoted as saying:
 
“To some in the business community, this is very discomforting.  The private marketplace, in my opinion, is ill prepared today with an infrastructure for an individual-based health insurance system.”

Link: http://www.epipolicycenter.org/researchbulletin100.html

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