Supposedly, this was “detail” offered by Barack Obama, in his nomination acceptance speech, on his plans for reforming healthcare…

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

So an Obama administration is going to lower premiums for people who currently have health insurance without altering the scope of their coverage and create a massive new entitlement program for people who currently don’t have insurance — all without raising taxes on anybody but “big” business and the top 5% of the working population.
Going beyond the speech, Senator Obama claims he can achieve his goals through increased regulation and through something called the “National Health Insurance Exchange”…

The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible.

It’s not economically possible for anyone, even Barack Obama, to lower prices and expand access to healthcare through increased regulation, without reducing the range of medicine covered by insurance. And while a “National Health Insurance Exchange” could, in theory, help expand access by allowing people who are self-employed or who work for companies that don’t offer health insurance to get the same tax-benefits that people who work for companies with health insurance currently get, it’s doubtful that such a program can help lower prices, unless policies sold through the exchange are given regulatory exemptions that non-exchange programs don’t get, which is the kind of thing that a government does when it’s trying to run non-government endeavors out of business. This is all pretty straightforward economics, unless there’s some major detail about what a “National Health Insurance Exchange” would do that I’m missing.
Related: I thought this part of Senator Obama’s speech was blatantly dishonest…

How else could [John McCain] offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

John McCain supports a universal tax credit for health insurance, regardless of who your employer is…

While still having the option of employer-based coverage, every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit – effectively cash – of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider. Those obtaining innovative insurance that costs less than the credit can deposit the remainder in expanded Health Savings Accounts.

How exactly is that “taxing benefits”?