This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 3rd, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Joe Biden has leveled his serious criticism at the McCain campaign's health care plan,

namely that it's a tax increase Michael Cannon director of

health policy studies at the Cato Institute while not a fan of the McCain

health care plan says Biden's claim is flatly untrue, far from being a tax increase, Cannon says, the McCain

plan is a tax cut.

Well, John McCain proposes to replace the tax break for employer-sponsored insurance, which is the reason most of us have health

insurance through an employer, with a universal tax credit that everyone gets no matter

where you purchase health insurance. So you can go out and buy insurance on your own,

on the individual market that stays with you from job to job,

and you get essentially the same tax break

from the federal government.

Well, what Joe Biden has latched on to

is the fact that John McCain will be removing a tax break.

He will be eliminating the tax break

for employer-sponsored insurance.

So that if you get insurance through your employer, the value of that health

insurance will be added to your income and taxed.

Joe Biden calls that the largest tax increase in American history and in a sense he's right but he's forgetting that John McCain is replacing that with another tax break and for most people that tax credit that John McCain is putting in its place

is going to be much greater than the tax break that they currently get for

employer-sponsored insurance and for people who get no tax break right now it's just

...