What are the key factors and potential problems raised by the health reform plans of presidential candidates Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)? How might the plans be improved, and how might the best elements of the two proposals be combined in a compromise package? Those are the topics examined in three papers published today on the Health Affairs web site.
University of Michigan professor Thomas Buchmueller and coauthors argue that the McCain plan would strip consumers of protections while producing few actual gains in the number of Americans with health coverage. Meanwhile, Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute and coauthors fault the Obama plan for attempting to impose behavioral changes through top-down regulation, rather than addressing the perverse economic incentives that drive healthcare costs. In a final paper, Wharton’s Mark Pauly outlines a strategy for blending the McCain and Obama approaches to produce a compromise reform plan.
