Pat Garofalo points out that after numerous denials, McCain’s senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin finally admitted that temporarily cutting the capital gains tax would overwhelmingly benefit millionaires. But Holz-Eakin’s truth-telling didn’t end there. During the segment on health care, McCain’s aide conceded that McCain’s health care tax credit wouldn’t cover the entire cost of a comprehensive health plan and would only allow some Americans to buy insurance in the individual market:

Now, the McCain plan does in fact have a $5000 credit…It doesn’t pay for the full cost of insurance. It provides a subsidy to the private entity — sector. And while it will allow some people to buy insurance, the average policy nationwide for a family plan in the individual market is something like $5100.

Watch it:

The Wonk Room has long argued that McCain’s plan would give you a $5,000 credit to buy a $12,680 plan and force you to find a sub prime health care plan with fewer benefits and higher costs. Yesterday, the McCain campaign agreed!

UPDATE: More on the campaign’s confused health care rhetoric here.

Sen. John McCain’s health care plan leaves too many Americans behind. Individuals with pre-existing conditions, women, baby boomers and children will have a harder time finding affordable health insurance under McCain’s proposal to move individuals from large employer-risk pools — where the risk and cost of health insurance are spread across a large group of people — into unregulated individual plans.

In fact, a new report from First Focus concludes that McCain’s $5,000 one-size-fits-all tax credit discriminates against families with children. “A family will get the same $5,000 tax credit regardless of the number of children they have. Based on this design, families are penalized for every child,” the report concludes.

And it only gets worse. Since McCain deregulates insurers and allows companies to cherry pick the healthiest individuals, 19 million children “currently with employer coverage could be barred from insurance” in the individual market place “due to pre-existing conditions.” Children who require autism care, well care visits, or lead poisoning treatments could “lose the protection of having guaranteed benefits” once companies can relocate to states without consumer protections:

McCain’s proposed cuts to Medicaid and his lack of support for maintaining SCHIP — combined, the two programs cover approximately 26.4 percent of all children under 19 — would also erode the safety net programs that families rely on to keep their kids healthy.