Timothy Noah over at Slate has this piece analyzing the radical aspects of the McCain health care plan.
In essence, I learned, McCain is challenging fee-for-service medicine, though not to the point of mandating that doctors be put on salary. Under the present fee-for-service payment scheme, doctors have an economic incentive to maximize their income by performing as many medical procedures as possible. That drives up costs, overtaxes hospitals, and threatens patients’ lives. McCain deserves congratulations for taking on the fee-for-service problem, even if his proposed solution is short on specifics.
The article does make the point that McCain does not seem all that serious about actually doing this though. And he has little chance of winning at this point. I think Noah would also agree that the Democratic plans by Obama, Edwards, and Clinton, while modest, have greater potential down-the-road as people opt into the government plan.