So in 2008 McCain came up with a proposal and President Obama responded by ... oh, wait.
No. There is nothing to wait for. You didn't have that restriction in the claim you made, so it does not apply.
Furthermore, McCain remained a senator after the 2008 election (and is still one to this day). He could have elected to present the bill to the senate, yet he did not.
Wow, are we really going to be THAT dishonest, here? The Republicans (not McCain, but as a whole) came out with a different proposal, and the Democrats attacked the Republicans for bothering to come out with a proposal at all, since it had no chance of passing and was therefore a waste of time. Spare us the bullshit.
The fact is, this proposal was well-known and out there. No, it was not in bill form, but, again, you didn't say anything about that.
The best example I can find of his proposal is this one ...
... which disproves the claim you made, that "There was no alternative plan proposed that would not have increased prices."
The effect would increase over time as people would take on more responsibility for themselves (high deductible plans and HSAs etc.) in order to get lower rates, which increases competition not just insurance, but in the provision of health care itself, which would then drive down insurance prices more.
That is 100% speculation.
Well, insofar as basic economics is 100% speculation, sure. In other words, no, it's not.
You cannot prove that the prices would have been driven down
I can prove that the broadly accepted laws of economics -- by both liberal and conservative economists -- show that they would have been driven down. Shrug. It's very simple, and everyone agrees with this: the biggest driver of high prices is that consumers are dissociated with the prices they are paying, so there is almost no competitive pressure to keep prices down. This is entirely clear.
Simple: because "Obamacare" drastically limits competition with all sorts of minimum and maximum mandates, and by forcing us to cover more, there's even less competition pressure on health care provision.
The bill also gave the option for people to keep existing plans. Yet the insurance industry has realized they make more money by canceling existing plans under the bill. This is to be expected in any scenario, the insurance industry will always find a way to maximize profit.
As a side note: did Obama know this would happen when he was secretly negotiating with the insurers (despite saying it would be public, during his campaign)? If not, he's incompetent. If so, he's a malicious liar.
Anyway, that option is only temporary. The grandfathering runs out after a few years, so you're not actually making a point here, because it still holds that "Obamacare" drastically limits competition beyond what it is today (which is scant), and has only half-assed price controls, and is therefore destined to see huge price increases.
I am not, of course, in favor of price controls, but they are the other option for keeping prices down. But with no real competition and no real price controls, prices rise. Duh. This plan was designed to further increase prices, while they were lying and saying it would decrease them, most likely because they were secretly giving handouts to the health insurance companies. This might also explain why the Democrats did everything they could to not work with Republicans on the bill, because even though it is clear that Republican input could have helped increase choice and decrease costs, it would have come at a cost of the insurance company handouts like minimum coverage and individual mandates.
McCain never made his proposal on the floor. It was never offered as an alternative to the Health Insurance Bailout Act of 2010. He offered it up on the campaign trail and then, as best I can tell, he never spoke of it again after the 2008 election was over. Quite simply it was not proposed during the health care debates during the administration of the current president.
All of that is irrelevant to the claim you made. Shrug.