McCain’s Health Care Plan: Worse for Women, Worse for All of Us

by Mike Hall, Oct 6, 2008

A new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) looks at Sen. John McCain’s plan to tax your employer-provided health care on a state-by-state basis and estimates as many as 27 million of us could lose our work-based coverage under McCain’s tax plan. Two more recent reports look at other aspects of McCain’s health care plan, including its impact on women.

McCain’s health care tax could mean the loss of health care coverage for as many as 1.3 million Ohioans, 1.2 million Pennsylvanians, 1.1 million Floridians, 800,000 Virginians and nearly 600,000 Wisconsinites.

The study notes:

The current tax exclusion is the linchpin of the employer-based health care system in the United States…and it is how 165 million U.S. residents under the age of 65 receive health insurance.

McCain’s plan to eliminate tax deductions on health care for employers who provide it significantly accelerates the decline of employers offering workers health coverage. Says Josh Bevins, co-author of the report:

It’s hard to think of any other change that could do more harm than this one to a health care system that’s already weakened.

Co-author Elise Gold says McCain’s health care tax:

makes it more expensive for employers to provide health care benefits to their employees, so will see more of them dropping this benefit.

The EPI report, McCain Plan Accelerates Loss in Employer-Provided Health Insurance, looks at the most drastic impact of his health care tax—employers who completely drop their coverage.

According to another review of the plan, as many as 158 million people could see their health coverage disrupted—from complete loss of work-based coverage to higher costs to less comprehensive coverage and higher taxes.

According to the Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund’s John McCain’s Radical Health Care Agenda for America:

Millions of families would lose the coverage they get from their jobs, forcing them to shop for health coverage in a deregulated insurance market stripped of consumer protections. Tens of millions of Americans with health problems—such as cancer or diabetes—would find it particularly difficult or impossible to find adequate coverage, increasing their medical costs dramatically. Tens of millions of families would eventually pay higher taxes on health premiums, making health care less affordable…

It embraces a radical vision for our health care system: a deregulated market along the lines of the disastrous deregulation of Wall Street.

Another look at McCain’s health care plans by CAP along with Planned Parenthood Action Fund, finds that his plan would “have a devastating affect on women.”

McCain’s health plan would erode important state requirements aimed specifically at protecting women’s access to some of their most basic health needs. By permitting plans to cherry-pick their state of residence as well as enabling plans to sell policies without regard to state insurance rules.

Some the basic services now required in many states that are threatened, according to the report Worse for Women, include:

• Annual breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer screening.
• Sexually transmitted infection screening.
• Prohibitions on gender-based premium rating
• Limited definitions of pre-existing conditions that prevent surgeries like Caesarean sections from limiting women’s coverage.

For more on McCain’s health plan click here.

Click here for details from Sen. Barack Obama’s, health care reform plan that that will allow families to keep the health care coverage they have now, but also gives us a wider array of options, including a public plan, so everyone can get affordable, high-quality health care.

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