Health Care on McCain Horizon
Republican US presidential candidate Senator John McCain leaves a roundtable meeting at Miami's Children Hospital in Florida April 28, 2008. (Reuters)
By Michael D. Shear
TAMPA, Fla. -- In Sen. John McCain's perfect health care world, individuals would each seek the ideal health insurance policy in a competitive marketplace that would drive down premiums even as prevention and healthier living reduces the cost of care.
That's the vision McCain will outline Tuesday morning as he launches a week-long discussion of health care and his efforts to improve quality and increase access. The vision is not new -- he's been talking about it for months -- but aides promised a few more details as McCain seeks an alternative to the plans being offered by Democrats.
The centerpiece of McCain's plan remains a $5,000 tax credit that individuals could use to search out the best insurance for their needs. McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin told reporters in a briefing Monday evening that the tax credit would allow some people to leave their employer-sponsored plan and do better on their own.
The plan, he said, "allows those people who are buying on their own to get the same tax benefit" by entering a "big, competitive national market" for health insurance. He said McCain is also backing new public education campaigns to encourage healthier lifestyles and new incentives for the use of medical technology to lower costs.
Critics of the plan lambasted it today as inadequate and said there is little evidence that a open market alone will improve access or lower costs.
"What we are seeing from John McCain is a version of what George Bush has tried to do," said Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic candidate John Edwards and a fellow at the Center for American Progress. "It's the idea that the market will take care of us."
Edwards disputed that notion, saying that people who are forced into the competitive marketplace today are faced with higher costs for insurance, not lower costs. And she said people who have pre-existing conditions are often met with prohibitively high premiums.
"John McCain's health care program works very well if you happen to be rich and healthy -- and not very well if those are not descriptions of you," she said.
Holtz-Eakin said McCain's plan does not envision a fully-functioning market for insurance right away, but he could not say how long it would take. In the meantime, he said McCain would seek to find "best practices" among state programs that aim to take care of people in the marketplace who have medical conditions that make it very expensive to get insurance.
"You have to phase all these policies in," he said. "I don't think anyone thinks all this happens overnight."
Posted at 7:57 PM ET on Apr 28, 2008
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Posted by: Go Learn For Yourself | April 29, 2008 1:33 PM
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Posted by: tyue1lci34 | April 29, 2008 12:46 PM
Since Obama has refused to debate Clinton again, I believe Clinton should challenge McCain to a debate that focuses on healthcare and the economy. This woould give the voting public a glimpse of a Clinton/McCain matchup. She'll put him through his paces. Do it before Indiana and NC primaries.
Let's go, Hillary!
Posted by: annie | April 29, 2008 2:01 AM
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The 44th President of the United States
President Barack Obama
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Posted by: | April 29, 2008 1:11 AM
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............OBAMA VS. MCCLINTON
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Posted by: | April 28, 2008 9:56 PM
Remember, John himself admits that he doesn't know much about econimics.
The fundamental principle of the market place is "Buy low, sell high." For for profit Insurance companies, that means charge as high a premium as you can, and pay as low a payout as you can.
So squeeze the providers, (hospitals, doctors, nurses, etc) as hard as you can, raise premiums as much as possible, and drop coverage well before you might have to pay out for major medical problems.
John, as with all true Republicans, believes that the Government should never provide a service if some republican can make a (BIG) profit providing something like it, even when, like the TVA and the REA, the private sector couldn't be bothered providing electricity to the people served by the Government.
The Government, according to the Wendel Wilkies of the world, shouldn't provide those resources, since they could easily provide them much mor efficiently, at much smaller cost, and in a much quicker time frame, and therefore had an unfair advantage. That unfair advantage, of course, was that the Government could afford to care principly about the customers, whereas Wilkie's Clients, Big Energy (in those days the electric monopolies) had to worry primarily about their profits and dividends.
Wilkie, of course, eventually ran for President, trying to be "Just Like" FDR except that WW was dead set on being big money's friend at the same time.
Come to notice, isn't John sort of channeling WW?
Posted by: ceflynline@msn.com | April 28, 2008 8:27 PM
Senator McCain needs to only look in his own Back-yard to see what is driving Health-Care through the Roof.
Free services that keep getting passed on to Paying Customers, by the Illegal hordes, is why we will NEVER have affordable Insurance, UNTIL the Invaders are able to be denied services, or Mexico/Honduras/Guatemala/El Salvidor/Cuba/Belize/Nicaragua...., are forced to Pay for THEIR Damned Citizens!
The single BIGGEST Insult to Injury, is the "Anchor Baby" that due to Nancy Pelosi Blocking HR-1940:Birthright Citizenship Act, allows the Hospital to get Stung by the Illegal Non-PAYING Parents, then, the US to get Stung with a SCHIPs Recipient!
McCain, PLEASE remove your Cranium from your Rectum on this one! :-(
Posted by: RAT-The | April 28, 2008 8:18 PM
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Well, at Least Republicans are MENTIONING Health Care, now.
It's a start. Of course, with all the "Free Market" lies, it will change nothing.
Our Health Care system is 15% of our GDP. Other countries like Japan, Germany, UK, Switzerland, are about half that.
Our Administrative costs are about 20% of our total Health Care cost. Those other countries I mentioned are at about 6% (Switzerland is at a stunning 2%).
The KEY to giving everyone a good, affordable Health Care system is to make insurance companies non-profit.
Let them compete for funds by having more clients. The best companies, will have more clients. The crappier ones will have less and less until they disappear.
That's what other nations who have converted from our system have done and it has worked and it will work here, too.
Of course, we have to stand up to the Pharmaceutical Companies and the Insurance Companies, but it HAS been done...As recently as 1990 in Switzerland, and all is VERY VERY well. Now, even the Conservatives there would not dream of not having universal health care.
It is a RIGHT of living in a civilized society. That's why prisoners of war and prison inmates are given health care. To hold them without it would be illegal.
THINK !