Professor Co-Authors Critique of McCain Health Insurance Plan

Newswise — Anne Royalty, associate professor of economics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), is one of four scholars who have published a critique of Senator John McCain's proposed health insurance reform plan.

McCain's reform package "would eliminate the current tax exclusion of employer payments for health coverage, replace the exclusion with a refundable tax credit for those who purchase coverage, and encourage Americans to move to a national market for nongroup insurance," according to the critique abstract.

Results of the change will "tend to raise costs, reduce the generosity of benefits, and leave people with fewer consumer protections," the researchers said.

The critique, "Cost and Coverage Implications of the McCain Plan to Restructure Health Insurance," was published Tuesday (Sept. 16, 2008) in the online version of the policy journal Health Affairs.

Royalty's co-authors are: Thomas Buchmueller of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Sherry Glied of Columbia University, New York; and Katherine Swartz of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston.

For the complete critique, go to: http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.27.6.w472/DC1 .