McCain’s Radical Agenda

[The Blue Flower]

Bob Herbert: NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16herbert.html?ei=5070

A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.

There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”

For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.

“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

more at link...

[LeftishBrit]

1. That sounds incredibly scary!

[beam me up scottie]

2. Thanks for posting this!

I'm sending it to all of the fence sitters I know, dead people wear lipstick too.

[dropkickpa]

3. This would kill me

My employer contribution to health coverage is about $600 a month. I couldn't afford to pay taxes on that.