Presidential Debate: The Economy and Health Care

Most of the questions during last night’s presidential debate dealt with the economy. One of the issues that I find a major part of the economy is health care. Personally, I think that we should have universal health care. But that’s just me.

Anyway, the plan laid out by Barack Obama offers the closest thing to universal health care that we are going to get. Contrary to popular belief, Obama does not propose that the government completely take over health care. He does propose that ordinary Americans have access to *gasp* the plan that our elected representatives have access to — effectively lowering premium prices since private insurance companies would have to compete with the rates offered by this other plan.

Obama also proposes that small businesses of a certain size provide health care coverage. If they don’t, a fee would be charged to help cover the cost of health care. However, a very generous tax credit would be offered to small businesses to offset these costs. Besides, most small businesses would not, in fact, be affected by Obama’s proposed changes.

Obama also thinks that it’s a good idea to make sure, if nothing else, that all children get health care.

John McCain’s health care plan

For the most part, John McCain’s health care plan would be pretty much status quo. He would allow shopping across state lines, and he does say that he would offer a tax credit. However, he would tax employer-provided health benefits as income. While Obama exaggerated this effect by calling it a tax increase, the truth is that (initially) it would result in — at worst — effectively maintaining costs. The problem with John McCain’s plan is that if (and it’s likely) health care premiums rise, the benefit values increase, and so does the income tax on the benefit. Then the law would have to be changed to increase the tax credit. Or it really would be like increasing taxes.

John McCain would freeze (or maybe even cut) Medicare spending as part of his health care. Barack Obama just sort of sidestepped the question and tried to avoid entitlement spending altogether. Of course, if we had universal health care, Medicare would be a non-issue and the whole health care system could be overhauled to be more cost efficient.

I also agree with Obama on his plan to use an energy economy makeover to help fuel the economy.