After listening to John McCain speak again in last week's debate about his wonderful $5,000 tax rebate for health insurance, I felt that I had to speak out. This plan, more than anything else, drives home to me how out of touch Sen. McCain is with the reality of most of us in this country

What is the reality? How about reality for everyone working at the company in Pennsylvania where my brother-in-law works, where the insurance premiums for a family of four are about $700 a month? That's about $8,000 for the premiums alone, and this insurance plan still includes 20 percent deductibles for everything from major surgeries to doctor's office visits. That $5,000 isn't exactly going to cover it. I'm not sure who can afford that, but I know my sister and brother-in-law can't. And that's a company that has a plan available.

I challenge everyone reading this who has insurance through their work, get on Google and find a health insurance search engine, and see how much health insurance would be for your family if you didn't have it through the military or your work. My family of three, with no smokers, would be, according to one such site, $1,032 a month. This would leave more than $8,000 for us to cover beyond the $5,000 credit we'd get from Sen. McCain's plan (and that plan didn't even cover doctor's office visits).

Basically, this plan wouldn't help anyone who doesn't already have insurance through their work. Not only that, but it doesn't help anyone with a pre-existing condition get insurance, as most insurance plans exclude those individuals. Sen. McCain may have a lot of experience in government, but it doesn't seem to have resulted in him having any understanding of the economic realities for most of our country.

Lynn Sprott

Watertown