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Dear
Council AFA-CWA Members,
A Closer Look at
McCain-Palin's Health Care Plan for You!
One of the biggest issues confronting our country and
the two candidates for President is how to address the
health care crises. As more and more Americans slip into
the uninsured, which result in the costs for those
insured to increase, Americans agree that we can't
continue with the way things are today.
As union members, we often have health care plans much
better than those that don't have the benefit of a union
contract. John McCain's health care plan would change
all that. His proposal to "fix" the health care crisis
is to TAX YOUR UNION NEGOTIATED HEALTH CARE BENEFITS. In
a direct assault on anyone that has a good or even
"reasonable" health care plan, he wants to increase your
federal income taxes by treating the benefits provided
by your employer as "income" that can be taxed by the
IRS.
When the accusations about "raising taxes" are thrown
around, please remember that John McCain wants' to
dramatically increase your income tax by treating your
health care benefits provided by your employer as the
equivalent of income in your paycheck.
The attached article does an excellent job of
summarizing the McCain plan and what it means.
Some highlights:
*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.
"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.
The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost
certainly will be to increase family costs for medical
care."
Under the McCain plan
(now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to
receive employer-paid health benefits would look at
their pay stubs each week or each month and find that
additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on
the value of their benefits.
In Solidarity,
Alin Boswell
LEC President, DCA
US Airways Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
September 16, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
McCain's Radical Agenda By BOB HERBERT
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/
bobherbert/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to
notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah
Palin are planning for the nation's health insurance
system?
These are changes that will set in motion nothing less
than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that
protects most American families.
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.
Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just
completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their
findings are being published on the Web site of the
policy journal, Health Affairs.
According to the study: "The McCain plan will force
millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the
private insurance system - the nongroup market - where
cost-sharing is high, covered services alimited and
people will lose access to benefits they have now."
The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost
certainly will be to increase family costs for medical
care."
Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan)
employees who continue to receive employer-paid health
benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each
month and find that additional money had been withheld
to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits.
While there might be less money in the paycheck, that
would not be anything to worry about, according to
Senator McCain. That's because the government would be
offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit - $2,500
for a single worker and $5,000 per family - to be used
"to help pay for your health care."
You may think this is a good move or a bad one - but
it's a monumental change in the way health coverage
would be provided to scores of millions of Americans.
Why not more attention?
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out
of employer-paid health coverage and into the health
insurance marketplace, where naked competition is
supposed to take care of all ills. (We're seeing in the
Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers
and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered
marketplace has been working.)
Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step
in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison
into the system. It's the beginning of the end.
When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional
taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many)
will opt out of the employer-based plans - either to buy
cheaper insurance on their own or to go without
coverage.
That will leave employers with a pool of older, less
healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily
be more expensive, which will encourage more and more
employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage
at all.
The upshot is that many more Americans - millions more -
will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and
often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As
Senator McCain has said: "I believe the key to real
reform is to restore control over our health care system
to the patients themselves."
Yet another radical element of McCain's plan is his
proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations
by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers
anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state
that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or
annual physicals, or breast examinations, would
essentially be meaningless.
In a refrain we've heard many times in recent years, Mr.
McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of
these "needless and costly" insurance regulations.
This entire McCain health insurance transformation is
right out of the right-wing Republicans' ideological
playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and
send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.
You would think that with some of the most venerable
houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right
before our eyes, we'd be a little wary about spreading
this toxic formula even further into the health care
system.
But we're not even paying much attention.
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