(CNSNews.com) – Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said during the Republican primaries that if he is elected president, he will try to shift the financial responsibility for health-care insurance away from employers to individuals.
 
As he campaigns, he is pushing that message.
 
Currently, employers pay 71 percent of the health care insurance premiums in America.
 
Under current laws, employers’ costs for health care are exempt from income taxes. McCain’s plan would remove this tax break and replace it with a $2,500-a-year refundable tax credit (or rebate) for individuals, or a $5,000 rebate for families to offset the costs of insurance.
 
“It is good tax policy to take away the bias toward giving workers benefits instead of wages,” McCain said at a Des Moines Rotary Club luncheon, Oct. 11, 2007. “It is good health policy to reward having insurance, no matter where your policy comes from.”
 
According to McCain’s plan, which is coming under tighter scrutiny as the political conventions approach in late July and early August, people would be free to choose health plans that fit their needs, with the resulting competition driving down health-care costs across the board.
 
Many conservatives have hailed the McCain plan as a “radical” and positive change from the status quo.
 
“John McCain is proposing the most radical overhaul of American health care policy in a decade and a half,” Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service.
 
“Not since Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed reform attempt has a presidential candidate, or even a president, called for such sweeping changes to the way health care is delivered and health insurance is purchased.”
 
But a liberal health-care expert said that the tax rebates are too small, given the fact that companies currently pay an average of $8,000 per year per employee to cover health insurance.
 
Karen Davenport, director of health policy at the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, said a good plan should focus on getting as many people as possible covered rather than focusing on individual responsibility.
 
"Instead of sending people off on their own with a little tax credit to go find an insurance company who is willing to take them, he (Obama) is talking about putting people into large groups,” Davenport told Cybercast News Service. “Obama is looking at how do we get group coverage, which is going to be more stable and have better benefits than anything that Senator McCain is offering."
 
The McCain campaign, meanwhile, claims that health-care goals should be about more than just reaching universal coverage.
 
“Families should be in charge of their health care dollars and have more control over care,” the candidate said, as recorded in the health care section of the official McCain for President Web site. “An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people's needs, lower prices, and portability.”