Phillip Klein points out an interesting development in the health care debate:

When it comes to health care, it’s actually conservatives who are offering change, and liberals who are offering more of the same failed policies (only on a much grander scale).

McCain’s health care plan calls for the elimination of the horribly inequitable and inefficient employer-based health insurance system. Obama, the ostensible progressive, is for sticking with the status quo:

The Obama campaign has taken to calling John McCain’s health-care plan “radical” and Barack Obama himself declared during Tuesday night’s debate that it would “lead to the unraveling of the employer-based health care system.”

If ever a system needed “unraveling” this is it:

The current system discriminates against those who seek to purchase their own health insurance, because it only offers a tax exemption for those who get insurance through their employers. As a result, many self-employed Americans cannot afford health insurance, even though their taxes help subsidize others.

McCain’s plan would go a long way toward fixing this situation:

McCain’s plan would make the system fairer by ending the tax exemption for health-care purchased through one’s employer and replacing it with tax credits of $2,500 for each individual and $5,000 for every family.

Meanwhile, Obama wants to exacerbate the problem:

Obama would not only maintain the current system of regulation, but he would implement onerous regulations at the national level.

I thought “progressives” were for, like, progress. Did I miss something? Is their progressivism just a social pose?