Why McCain has the best health-care plan

From the article:

"McCain suggests that we junk all that. Say you're earning $100,000 a year and your company provides about $9,000 toward your $12,000 family premium, which is about average. Today you're taxed only on the $100,000. Under McCain's plan, you'd also pay on the $9,000. That could mean an extra $3,000 or so in federal taxes alone. To compensate for the extra levy, McCain would provide a $2,500 federal tax rebate for individuals and $5,000 per family, meaning a family would simply subtract $5,000 from its tax bill, the equivalent of a big cash payment."

Do you conservatives really trust that the federal government would tax health care premium and give us a rebate? I don't. It reminds me of the Fair Tax idea of putting a 23% national sales tax on everything, then giving everyone a rebate on "necessities".

The best plan would be to set up a single payer national health insurance program and be done with it instead of all of these tax here, rebate there ideas that are becoming rather tiresome.

 

You're spot on about the Fair Tax. We have long agreed on this. That "prebate" should be jettisoned and then we have a decent plan.

I am not convinced a single-payer system is plausible. I'd love to hear more mechanics of a proposal, but on the surface it just doesn't seem tenable. But I'm willing to listen. I still think you cannot solve a market driven problem without a market driven solution.