Politics and Culture

Biden got a lot of facts wrong, which prompts the question, "What good does it do to be knowledgeable if you're always wrong?"

Anyways, I'd like to refute the easiest one and let smarter people take the others.

Criticizing John McCain’s health care plan, Biden said that McCain would tax health care and “then you’re going to have to replace a $12,000 — that’s the average cost of the plan you get through your employer; it costs $12,000 — you’re going to have to pay — replace a $12,000 plan, because 20 million of you are going to be dropped. So you’re going to have to place — replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you’ve just given to the insurance company.”

The object of taxing benefits is to eventually transfer health insurance from employers to employees. I don't know if Biden's $12,000 figure is correct, but it assumes one thing: that the employer wouldn't substitute a higher salary for the now-taxed health insurance. Money is money to corporations. The employer might even save money, for it's much more expensive to administer a complicated health plan- more employees and such- than to just give employees higher salaries.