Both John McCain and Barack Obama promise to solve the nation's quickly-mounting health insurance problems. An in-depth look reveals that both plans seem unrealistic, as neither candidate actually talks about the many potential or certain problems of their proposed solutions. Drastic changes are needed, but how to exactly cure the ailing health care system is an enormous challenge.

The fact is, the United States population is aging by the year. This means that the burden on Medicare will increase dramatically over the next years. As it became less fashionable to have children, the cost of having an ever-older population will affect our country in many negative ways.

McCain essentially wants to give people a refundable tax credit ($2,500 for an individual; $5,000 for a family) to buy insurance through work or on their own, which could cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years, according to a preliminary analysis of the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan think tank in Washington. McCain's plan will undermine the existing employer-sponsored approach, driving administrative costs higher because there will be more individual plans than group plans. This approach will, in the end, leave people at the mercy of insurers, who are already proven to work against the interests of the people they are insuring.

Obama wants the federal government to regulate and subsidize a part of the insurance market. He would set up a new government entity called the National Health Insurance Exchange to determine insurers to provide coverage to mental health treatment and preventive care, and deny them the possibility of excluding coverage or increase prices based on pre-existing medical conditions. Obama's solutions might drive some insurers out of business, and insurance of currently healthy people might cost more to cover the increased costs for those with pre-existing conditions.

In the end, neither candidate has a real solution to America's health woes. Obama's plan seems better, but its long-term consequences are hard to quantify. A solution can only be developed in time, with the help of input from several academic fields. Political-only decisions are just not going to work: this crisis needs to be tackled scientifically, with the help of experts from the health care field and economists.