Business leaders oppose McCain's health care plan

What the McCain campaign would rather you not think about.

Officials with eight business trade groups contacted by The New York Times predicted the McCain plan would raise costs and force some employers to stop providing health benefits.

A recent survey of 187 corporate executives by the American Benefits Council and Miller & Chevalier, a consulting firm, found that three-fourths felt the repeal of the tax exclusion would have a “strong negative impact” on their workers. Only 4 percent said they would provide additional pay to fill any gaps.

John J. Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executive officers, said his group instead supported extending the tax exclusion to those who bought coverage on their own.

“One of the things we don’t want to do,” Mr. Castellani said, “is jeopardize 170 million Americans who do get insurance through their employers.”

A number of business officials are worried that Mr. McCain’s tax credits would lure young and healthy workers into the individual market to take advantage of cheaper, less-generous policies. That, they say, would leave employers to cover an older and sicker pool of workers, forcing up premiums.

Workers who found that they had less buying power with the tax credits than with the tax exclusion could be expected to pressure employers to raise salaries or benefit subsidies, the business officials said.

“There are huge questions about the $5,000 per family being an insufficient amount in terms of being able to purchase the same coverage,” said Mr. Josten with the Chamber of Commerce.

Helen B. Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of 300 companies, agreed that many workers would face a net loss. “The last thing you want to do to the average working person, especially when you’re bailing out big financial companies, is take something they hold near and dear partially away,” Ms. Darling said.

Economists forecast that the problem would worsen over time because Mr. McCain, according to advisers, would index his tax credits to overall inflation. Health insurance premiums have grown four times faster than inflation since 1999.

It's comforting to know that in a time when IRAs and 401ks are plunging in value, John McCain will take away your employee-sponsored health care. If you're lucky enough to have such a thing. And if you don't, he'll give you an inflation-indexed tax credit and leave you to the ravages of the open, and soon to be unregulated, market.

But remember. John McCain may never have been an astronaut, but he understands the challenges of space.

And he was a POW.

And Obama is black.