McCain on Healthcare

Presidential candidate John McCain talked about his healthcare plan in a speech at the Cleveland Clinic. You can watch it here (about 4 min.). He is against the government requiring any insurance mandates on principle, and believes it should be made easy for patients to shop for health care by price. The cornerstone of his plan is a $5000 tax credit for each individual to purchase insurance. This would decouple health insurance from employment. He also says he would work with state governments to build good guaranteed access plans (GAP) for those people who are denied regular coverage. McCain's ideas are similar to those of Ramesh Ponnuru talked about in an earlier post ("A Conservative View of Healthcare"). My opinion of these ideas is also in that post. These are radically different proposals from the two democrats (whose plans are pretty similar), so this election offers a clear choice on the health care front.