With nobody standing between him and the GOP nomination for president, John McCain is talking about issues. Slowly he's beginning to clarify his healthcare proposals.

Here's what we're beginning to see:

At the heart of McCain's plan is a radical thought: Take away the tax breaks employers get for insuring their workers, and turn that money ($2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for families) into tax credits people would use to help pay for insurance they buy on the open market.

This would have two effects:

• Remove a powerful incentive for employers to insure their workers, likely resulting in fewer employers offering insurance. (And exacerbating a trend--the percentage of employers providing health insurance for employees dropped from about 70 percent to 60 percent since 2000.)
  
• Send millions of Americans into the private market seeking health insurance policies.
  

As McCain sees it, the increased demand for individual health insurance policies would spur innovation and competition, driving price down and quality up. He'd also use federal authority to help people shop for insurance across state lines to free up market forces even more.

Opponents argue this would result in insurers cherry-picking the healthy people, and denying coverage or charging high rates for people with higher health risks or pre-existing conditions.

Until recently, McCain's plan hasn't included a provision to deal with these objections.

Now a plan is beginning to emerge.

The McCain plan would provide federal incentives for states to create "high-risk" pools--a way to gather the difficult-to-insure as a single group, with the states using private insurers to administer the coverage. (This essentially makes the state like a self-insured employer, paying out claims itself and outsourcing the plan administration.) These plans, already used in several states, require state or federal tax funds to subsidize the care of this high-risk group.

The positive view is that plans like this are already in place. Maryland, for instance, has a similar plan to cover some people without group insurance or public assistance who can't get affordable insurance on the open market.

The negative view is that this is expensive.

Massachusetts' closely watched universal plan, signed into law by former McCain opponent and then-governor Mitt Romney, includes a similar state risk-pool provision. Costs for the plan as a whole have far exceeded original estimates.

Another unfavorable view is that according to McCain's advisers, this plan would insure only about 7 million of the 47 million currently uninsured. His advisers have previously said other elements of his plan would pull more people (number unspecified, but by design, they say, not everyone) into the ranks of the insured.

What does all this mean? McCain is going to have to continue to develop a plan that shows he'll expand insurance and control costs. The Democrats' plans, for better or worse, address these questions directly in significant detail.