McCain wants to businesses to stop offering health care to their employees, and to force everyone to buy insurance individually. The Des Moines Register writes,

The proposal [by McCain] should scare the heck out of the millions of Americans who rely on employer-based coverage... Buying individual policies means having your health history reviewed. It means not having the bargaining power and protections that come with being part of a plan offered by an employer. And it's expensive...

The senator is correct that the employer-based system of health insurance in this country isn't working. Businesses are saddled with the high costs of coverage, putting them at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. Insurance shouldn't be tied to jobs.

But the more reasonable solution is to offer everyone what Medicare already offers: health coverage financed by a combination of tax dollars and participant contributions, thus allowing the huge bargaining power of millions of Americans to leverage down costs.

That idea is nowhere near as radical as forcing millions of Americans to shop for their own coverage in a profit-driven, private-insurance sector.

McCain is lying about the Democratic plans to make private insurance affordable to the 47 million uninsured Americans, claiming Democrats want a "massive government takeover"

"There are those that want a massive government takeover of the health care system in America," Mr. McCain warned Thursday in Des Moines, as he made the case for his more market-based approach...

"But before you decide to sign on to that kind of a program, go to Canada, or go to European countries that have government-run health care systems," he continued. "My friends, they don’t work, they’re inefficient, and they end up in a two-tiered system where the wealthiest can afford to pay for their own health care and those with low income sometimes wait six or eight months for a routine kind of treatment. And that’s what I’m not going to let happen to the United States of America."