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Republicans have laid down their marker on health care reform and it’s very mavericky. Congressional Republicans dub their plan the Patients Choice Act, but it is nearly identical to the McCain health care plan defeated by voters last November.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is proposing the most radical overhaul of American health care policy in a decade and a half, says Michael Tanner, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute. McCain would move us away from a system of employer-based health insurance. He plans to provide all Americans with a $2,500 refundable tax credit for individuals and a $5,000 credit for families, regardless of how people obtain their insurance. Most notably, McCain would allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines, a practice now prohibited, says Tanner. Health insurance is largely regulated at the state level, and the...

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- Healthcare experts are questioning the feasibility of likely Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain's plan to subsidize high-risk insurance pools. Such state-run, high-risk pools are used by 35 states as stop-gap measures to provide health insurance for about 207,000 people who otherwise cannot obtain coverage from private insurers. In April, McCain, R-Ariz., announced that if elected president he would expand federal support for state high-risk pools or create a structure modeled after them, The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) reported Wednesday. But skeptics say it would take far more than the $10 billion McCain foresees the program...

Today, In Florida, John McCain Outlined His Plan For Health Care Reform. John McCain believes we can and must provide access to health care for every American. He has proposed a comprehensive vision for achieving that. For too long, our nation's leaders have talked about reforming health care. Now is the time to act. Americans Are Worried About Health Care Costs.The problems with health care are well known: it is too expensive and 47 million people living in the United States lack health insurance. John McCain Believes The Key To Health Care Reform Is To Restore Control To The Patients...

To say that John McCain has a health care "plan" is to suggest that the presumptive Republican nominee has huddled with a bunch of experts and "stakeholders" to come up with a solution that guarantees something for everybody. Instead, Mr. McCain's approach to health care reform is similar to Ronald Reagan's view of government: It flows from a belief that more competition, freedom and greater individual choice will lead to more innovation, greater opportunity and increased well-being. First, Mr. McCain will substitute the dictates of government with decisions of doctors and patients by shifting the tax breaks and buying power...

May 02, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Candidate of Change?McCain’s health-care proposal is just the start of what has to be a broader conservative reformation. By Rich Lowry Editor’s note: This column is available exclusively through King Features Syndicate. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact: kfsreprint@hearstsc.com, or phone 800-708-7311, ext 246). If there’s just one candidate of change this fall, John McCain will be the Horatio Seymour or James Cox of 2008 — a presidential also-ran all but forgotten to history. The only way McCain can hold the White House for the Republicans is if he...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is proposing a greater federal commitment to people without health insurance on Tuesday, suggesting that it help funds states to set up non-profit risk pools to help Americans who are denied coverage or can’t afford it. McCain’s health-policy experts provided a ballpark estimate of $7 billion a year for the new federal commitment. “Cooperation among states in the purchase of insurance would … be a crucial step in ridding the market of both needless and costly regulations, and the dominance in the market of only a few insurance companies,” McCain says in remarks prepared for delivery...