McCain’s health care plan risky?
Which do you like best?
AJC-Quick test: Which presidential candidate offers the most radical new approach for health care coverage in the United States?
If you listen to the spin-meisters denouncing universal health care as “socialized medicine,” you’d answer Democrat Barack Obama. But by far, the most radical plan belongs to John McCain. The Republican candidate would essentially destroy the foundation on which the current health insurance system is based and replace it with a dubious plan to let the marketplace work its magic.
“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade with banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation,” McCain wrote in a recent issue of the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries, the people who determine your rates for, among other things, health insurance.
In other words, if you like what free-market conservatives have done for the banking and finance industry, you’ll love what they have in mind for health insurance. McCain’s plan would put the health of many citizens at risk. It would also exacerbate the vicious cycle of the uninsured seeking care in the nation’s emergency rooms, causing local tax subsidies of public hospitals to rise along with the premiums of those of us with insurance.
Obama’s plan is hardly perfect. At best, it would leave about 6 percent of the under-65 population without any coverage, compared with 17 percent now. But Obama proposes to build on the basics of employment-based insurance, adding requirements to make insurers accept all applicants. Those ideas are, far and away, preferable to McCain’s reckless plan.
As has been the case in presidential elections for nearly three decades, there are stark differences in the Democratic and Republican platforms for health care reform. In years past, Democrats have tended to favor a plan administered by the federal government or the states — not unlike Medicare for the elderly — that would cover all those not covered by insurance on the job.
How many times does it have to be said? Health Insurance does not equal Health Care.
Conservatism will loose so much credibility if these crooks get bailed out. Oh shit. Free markets don’t mean anything when criminals aren’t arrested. Some critical components to free markets: even playing field and rule of law. And frankly I haven’t seen many arrests lately. Hell nobody even got fired after the NORAD stand-down. Real conservatism punishes failure. Or else.
I suppose if you like what liberalism has done for Social Security & Medicare, you’ll love their health care plan.