McCain's Own Advisor Admits Their Health Care Plan Sucks

Matthew Yglesias points out how truth is hard to hold back. The McCain campaign is now undermining its own proposal.

"Doug Holtz-Eakin [McCain's senior economic policy adviser] explains why McCain’s plan won’t cause young and healthy workers to drop out of group plans:

Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn’t abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Holtz-Eakin,

“Why would they leave?” said Holtz-Eakin. “What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.”

In other words, John McCain is promising to make your health care worse! Ooops!

I’m actually not sure if this is a “Kinsley gaffe” (where you accidentally tell the truth) or an effort at spin so desperate that he wound up pleading to an even worse offense than McCain was accused of. The individual market for health insurance really does suck."

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Why would I want to take inadequate credits that the McCain campaign now concedes are worse than the status quo?

As Ezra Klein points out: McCain wants to "discourage employers from providing the "way better" healthcare, precisely so workers would take McCain's credit onto the open market. "Why would they leave?" Holtz-Eakin asks. Because McCain wants them to."

McCain wants to break the system that people like and push Americans away from their "way better" healthcare, plain and simple. It ties into the "ownership society" that social conservatives push, the colossal failure that Bush tried.

Conversely, Obama wants to build on and improve the work-based system that people like. Over 160 million people, that's 160,000,000, get healthcare through work. We can't afford to let McCain bring his "deregulation" and anti-government rhetoric into our lives.