Obama’s Criticism of McCain’s tax plan fact checked: True

Sen. Barack Obama criticized the health-care plan of Republican opponent Sen. John McCain by saying, “In fact, just today, business organizations like the United States Chamber of Commerce, which generally are pretty supportive of Republicans, said that this would lead to the unraveling of the employer-based health care system.”

This created an almost-instant outcry from the conservative blogspheare. However, factchecking agrees that Obama accurately conveyed the information presented by the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Obama’s statment above, refer to a New York Times article where R. Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president for government affairs, called elements of McCain’s health plan “very discomforting” to some in the business community. “The private marketplace, in my opinion, is ill-prepared today with an infrastructure for an individual-based health insurance system,” he said in the article.

The article quotes other similar groups, who each have the express concern that eliminating the income-tax exclusion would “accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million.”

McCain’s health plan ends tax-free status that employer-provided health plans currently have, in order to switch the burden of healthcare from the companies to the individual. The McCain campaign says that under this plan, “families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider.”

In the article Josten doubts this health plan will be enough to buy the same kind of coverage as company-provided coverage. According to the article, officials with eight business trade groups contacted by the Times predicted the McCain plan would raise costs and force some employers to stop providing health benefits.