In last week’s vice-presidential debate, Democratic Senator Joseph R. Biden made reference to the health-coverage plan proposed by his opponents as “the ultimate bridge to nowhere,” among other disparaging remarks. Post-debate fact-checking individuals and services now say Biden seemed to mention only worst-case scenarios while overlooking the overall, much more positive, impact of the plan proposed by Republican Senator John McCain and his vice-presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Biden’s statistical data came from the journal, Health Affairs, which suggests as many as 20 million people would be forced out of employer-provided health insurance programs if the McCain/Palin ticket defeats the Obama/Biden ticket. Although never mentioned by Biden, the same Health Affairs report indicates 21 million Americans getting health coverage for the first time, also under the McCain plan.

Further analysis of the McCain plan reveals a limited number of Americans getting health insurance coverage after the first year the McCain plan is in operation, with the number of people getting affordable coverage increasing as the following nine years go by.

To finance his plan, McCain proposes taxing health benefits provided by an employer as income, a move that will generally increase the income taxes the average American will pay. In an attempt to offset this increase in income taxes, the McCain plan also calls for a health-care tax credit per covered taxpayer, at a rate of $2,500 for an individual and $5,000 for families.

Under the McCain plan, the average American taxpayer will pay a net tax of $1,241 on health-care coverage for 2009. This number is expected to drop to $895 and $386 in 2013 and 2018, respectively. This decrease in taxes, paid by the individual, over the next ten years is expected to make health coverage more affordable to more Americans over the course of the proposed McCain plan, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan organization.

The findings of several other analyses of the McCain health-care plan seem to agree that the plan will generate only a modest increase in coverage during its first year in operation, with increases in the number of Americans gaining coverage in the long term. Both the Brookings Institution and The Urban Institute estimate the plan will generate the most coverage about year four of operation, with about 5 million more people having coverage at that time than when the plan begins. Their data also suggests the number of covered Americans will begin to decline after that four-year mark, however, in much the same way a pendulum swings from one side but back to the other.

Health Affairs, the source of the Biden data, expects the number of covered Americans to grow, over time, under the McCain plan, estimating an additional 5 million Americans will be uninsured five years into the McCain plan.

Source: Washington Post