Meanwhile, it's impressive how fully the Obama campaign has snookered John McCain on health care. First, McCain came out with a plan that cost $3.6 trillion, but they said was "revenue neutral." Some simple calculations showed that that meant McCain was taxing health care benefits as employee compensation, meaning workers we're facing a huge payroll tax increase. This line of attack spooked the McCain campaign, so they told the Tax Policy Center they weren't going to tax health care as compensation. This left a $1.3 trillion shortfall in their plan. Which the Obama campaign basically ignored, because you can't have a $1.3 trillion shortfall in your plan, so it was fairly obvious that the McCain campaign was going to follow their original strategy and tax benefits. The McCain campaign, buffeted by questions on the topic, came out with a novel new payment strategy today. They're going to cut Medicare and Medicaid. And that's not mean liberal spin. It's the Wall Street Journal subhead: "Medicare, Medicaid Spending Would Be Reduced to Offset Proposed Tax Credit." As a general point, there's nothing in American politics more unpopular than cuts in Medicare. You can talk about means-testing Social Security before you can talk about taking health care from the elderly. But now McCain is promising cuts in Medicare. It's a brutal position to be in, and not the sort of thing he wants going out on mailers to elderly voters in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. But you can bet the printer is already drawing them up. I've gotten on the Obama campaign a bit for having an attack strategy on health care without much of an affirmative case. But the long-term takeaway from this fight is that they exposed gaping vulnerabilities in the standard-issue conservative health care plan. This is the outline all Republicans have been using of late, and it's never been a particularly strong proposal. It's more along the lines of "we must do something, this is something, we must do this!" As for the plan's evidence weaknesses, they either assumed that Democrats wouldn't be interested in hitting them on taxes or wouldn't notice. Neither has proven true and now McCain is not only raising taxes, but also chopping Medicare. And Obama has effectively painted him as a threat to employer-based health care coverage -- which is to say, a threat to the health care coverage most Americans have and are desperate to keep. This sort of plan is now dead. Future Republican candidates won't open themselves up to the same attacks. They will not take aim at the employer health market. And yet one more option is now closed off to them.
