Errors and misdirection ...

No, this is not another post on Palin. Recently, Obama has released a few statements and ads that bear correcting.

In one recent radio ad, Obama alleges that McCain has consistently voted against Stem Cell research. This is misleading. Pre-2000, McCain was against stem cell research, and Palin has a position against it, but McCain has voted for stem cell research since 2000 according to NPR.

In the debates and ads, Obama's campaign also alleges that McCain's healthcare proposal would not help at all. If I remember correctly, it says, "One hand giveth, while the other hand taketh away." This is correct, but misleading inasmuch as the conclusion it draws is that McCain's proposal wouldn't help.

It is true that McCain has proposed to tax people's employer provided healthcare contributions. The average healthcare plan is probably around $12,000 on average. Which actually implies the effective tax on this is around $4,000. The tax rebate offered by McCain for families is $5,000. It's more complicated than I am making it, but this actually implies that it's possible that many if not most people with employwr provided healthcare may actually get a net tax rebate under the McCain scheme.

Obama, meanwhile, calls his plan universal healthcare. It's nothing of the kind. It does provide a government backed alternative healthcare package to anyone who wants it. He does also want to mandate that insurance companies cannot turn away people with pre-existing conditions. However, the savings for almost everyone else is largely supposed to come from computerization, data sharing, etc. most of which isn't going to be realized for years.

The problem with McCain's idea is not that it is not going to give a lot of people some rebate. The problem is that it makes no attempt to address the underlying issue. It doesn't, for instance, compel insurance companies to insure people with pre-existing conditions. So, there is no change there. It gives $2,500 in a tax rebate to individuals, when the average individual insurance plan costs more than $4,000, which will probably still leave a huge number of people uninsured. It does nothing to reduce the cost of healthcare. It does attempt deregulation to encourage more competition for health insurance, but lack of competition for health insurance has never really been the problem. So, his plan does reduce healthcare costs for a lot of people, but it does so by giving a $1.5 trillion handout (by some reports on NPR) without addressing the underlying issues.

Obama's plan also has a lot of flaws, but by creating a low cost government provided alternative, they can create a player that forces insurance companies to lower rates and keep rates low. It insures the uninsured. It does create some regulations that should ultimately lead to reduction in costs for all, and it addresses the issue of people with preexisting conditions.

So, all in all, McCain has a massive entitlement program that doesn't address the basic problems, but that does give more people cash back, Obama addresses the underlying issues better (albeit by using the government rather than markets), but gives less to those with insurance already.

This is not really explained by the Obama ads. McCain, I'm sure, will attempt to distort it the other way.