Today, most Americans receive health insurance through large organizations (either their employer or the government). Only a small number of them (about one in 11) buy it on their own in the individual insurance market.

Almost all experts agree that the health care proposal that presumptive GOP nominee John McCain recently announced would shift that balance--perhaps substantially--toward individually purchased coverage. McCain wants to replace the tax benefit for employer-provided coverage with a personal tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. That trade would cause some companies to drop coverage, driving an unpredictable number of their workers from employer-based insurance to individually based plans. Some of the uninsured--especially young people attracted to lower-cost, stripped-down plans--might also use McCain's new tax credit to buy individual policies. On both fronts, his plan would decouple insurance and employment. Hoping to promote portability and choice, McCain would steer millions of additional Americans toward the individual insurance market.

That raises an obvious question: Could the individual market handle the load? A wide variety of experts, including some in the insurance industry, say that the answer, at least for today, is no.

For starters, the administrative costs of individual policies are at least triple those of employer-based policies. That means a worker shifting from a group policy to an individual one receives significantly less coverage for the same price, notes Kenneth Thorpe, an Emory University health policy professor. And although group policies share risk between the young and old, the healthy and sick, the cost of individually based policies varies enormously, depending on the person's health. Most important, people with prior health problems often cannot get affordable coverage--if they can get any at all. "If you are a 60-year-old woman with multiple chronic diseases, forget it," Thorpe says. "There is nowhere for you to go in the individual market."

America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade association, insists that the individual market works better than Thorpe and similar critics believe. But, tellingly, even AHIP is not arguing for more reliance on individually based insurance. "We haven't advocated that," says Karen Ignagni, the group's president. AHIP has endorsed a McCain-like tax credit for the uninsured, but it opposes eliminating the tax break for employer-based coverage.

McCain would respond to the problems in the individual market by massively deregulating the insurance industry, a step that he argues would promote productive competition. Each state currently sets minimum standards for the health insurance plans sold within its borders. McCain would override that state regulation by allowing health insurers to sell in every state any policy approved in any state. That would mean states could no longer require insurers to pay for specific medical procedures (such as mammograms) or establish coverage requirements (such as maximum deductibles) if any other state set a looser standard. The state that regulates least would set the rules.

Conservatives say that this approach would reduce premiums by freeing insurers from expensive state coverage mandates and compelling them to compete with rivals nationwide. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's top domestic policy adviser, says that as more people buy individual coverage, insurers could better balance risk, which would allow them to offer more-affordable individual policies for the old or sick than are now available. "The bigger pool solves a lot of your problems," he says. For those who still couldn't buy private insurance because of pre-existing health problems, McCain would establish government-subsidized "high-risk" pools.

But many experts argue that McCain would be courting disaster by deregulating the insurance industry just as his plan drove more people into the already turbulent individual market. That could produce massive premium increases and diminished (or no) coverage for people in poor health. Again, it is revealing that even AHIP has not endorsed nationwide insurance sales.

While McCain would deregulate the industry, Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton would restructure it by imposing new national standards. Each Democrat would establish government-organized purchasing exchanges for individuals and small businesses, and would require insurers participating in them to sell to all applicants at comparable prices, regardless of their health. The Democratic plans would face their own political challenges, but none may be as daunting as McCain's task of convincing Americans that the health care system will work better for average families if there is less regulation of the insurance industry, not more.

This article appeared in the Saturday, May 24, 2008 edition of National Journal.

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