This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 27, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Elizabeth Edwards says that under John McCain's health care reform proposal, neither

she nor Senator McCain could get coverage.

They're both cancer survivors.

Michael Cannon, the Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, offers his thoughts. of the And a key feature of that plan is that it would allow people a tax break if they purchase health insurance on what we call the individual market.

In other words, if they buy it directly from an insurer.

There's a lot of fear, mostly on the political left,

that if we do something like that, then sick people

are not going to be able to obtain health insurance.

Elizabeth Edwards, for example, the wife of former Senator John Edwards,

criticized the McCain plan because she said that both she and John McCain, who are cancer

survivors, would not be able to obtain health insurance in the world that

John McCain would like to see.

That's mostly wrong, what Mrs Edwards said.

And the reason is this, the individual health insurance market, even though it has been

drained of a lot of customers by a huge tax break for employer-sponsored insurance,

even though it has been heavily regulated by the states in ways that drive up the

cost of insurance.

The individual health insurance market covers millions of people with high cost conditions.

And that insurance stays with them, in many cases, longer than employer-sponsored insurance

does.

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