Vote McCain, Lose Your Health Insurance
| Mon Sep. 15, 2008 10:47 PM PDT
VOTE McCAIN, LOSE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE....Bob Herbert provides a preview of a new paper that analyzes the effects of John McCain's healthcare proposals:
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.
....According to the study: "The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now."
The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care."
Remember: this is a feature, not a bug. Republicans think Americans use too much healthcare, and they figure that the best way to fix this is to make it more expensive. So that's what McCain's plan does. It's a pretty typical specimen of the "more skin in the game" plan beloved of conservative think tanks.
Continues Below
Continued From Above
Comments
Interesting tradeoff. So McCain wants to reduce the burden on businesses by reducing business to doctors and the healthcare industry? I thought doctors and the healthcare industry were big Republican donors.
Universal healthcare is critical. If the economy continues to weaken, I expect Joe Sixpack will wake up and start demanding some help with healthcare costs. Nothing hits closer home than lack of healthcare.
I have very good health insurance, it's "free", and I owe many many union laborers and their strikes and sacrifices for it.
That said, if employers didn't have to pay for health insurance, they wouldn't be at such a disadvantage to offshore companies. And health insurance coverage would be a great deal fairer for all Americans.
I'm not as sanguine as rational that Jane and Joe Sixpack are going to demand help with healthcare costs, but it should be a very salient issue to raise, and to cram down McCain's throat.
P.S. On the C Crane Radio Show tonight, the "host" wanted to know where Bush was today. It's a good point. If the market takes another shit tomorrow, Obama may want to start asking where Bush is, and continuing to tie Bush around McCain's neck.
Hey vote_McCain -- go fuck yourself. You sound like one of the 19 percent of those people who believe themselves to be among the richest one percent of Americans, or perhaps you're one of the other 20 percent who expects to one day be among the richest 1 percent. In other words you're either deluded or dreaming. If you were really as well off as you want us to think you are you wouldn't feel the need to crow about it. I realize life still seems like high school to you but voting against your interests doesn't make you cool. It just makes you stupid.
Why is it so obvious when a halfwit freeper or powerliner thinks it's witty to repeat on the liberal blogs what they're told to think by their pseudo-conservative overlords? Oh, I remember now. These are the same people who voted for their jobs to go overseas or their industry to be de-regulated (like, say, miners in Sago, WV who voted overwhelmingly for Bush.) These are the proudly ignorant products of our failed education system, or better yet home-schoolers. They may lose their job, their house or their life, but at least the queers ain't gettin' married.
Here's a question for you...when campaigns pay for ads do THEY decide when they'll run...cause if they do I'm thinking add OPRAH to that list...but those audiences are already full of people who may support Obama (or, at least, not McCain) so how about American IDOL and the other silly reality shows (IMHO) and all NASCAR races on tv...UGH!
If McCain can so easily and readily lie to you without blinking, how can you believe him when he tells you ANYTHING! You can't. What happened to A man's word is his bond? Realistically, you just can't trust McCain to be honest, nor his running mate Sarah Palin. They show a blatant disregard for the truth -- they lie about their lying!
John McCain -- "he walked the anti-regulatory party line, with only occasional exceptions...and tried to lay down a smokescreen of righteousness by campaigning against small potato[e!]s like legislative earmarks--money to study the mating habits of, uh, crabs, in, uh, Alaska (proposed by Governor Honorable)." Joe Klein
And more importantly, John McCain wants to Privatize Social Security which could experience the same disastrous fate as the current economic condition --
http://www.truthout.org/article/mccain-would-privatize-social-security
The Obama campaign will run the ads it wants, in the media it chooses. Their national messaging people think far more deeply about this stuff than blog commenters, and they'll have solid reasons for their choices that most of us aren't even aware of.
That said, if you think some ad is so great, contribute to a 527 and get them to run it. No one's stopping you.
The article Herbert cites is in Health Affairs, a trade journal. The same source also published an analysis of Obama's plan, concluding the authors are skeptical. Interestingly, the authors are 2 Bush 41 health policy advisors and the current AEI health hack. How does that sort of assignment happen?
Yeah, those Republicans really understand human behavior, don't they? People are just falling all over themselves trying to get their gall bladder removed or their arteries stented up unnecessarily. Gotta cut that crap out. Morons.
If we spent more on preventitive care, like prenatal vists for expectant mothers, which is what Obama wants, we would spend far less in total on health care. Now, people present at the emergency room with advanced diseases from neglect or with complications, and that is the most inefficient and costly health care delivery model there is. Of course, our doorknob of a president has said every American has access to health care through the emergency room of your nearest hospital. Republicans truly are penny-wise and pound foolish creatures.
I cannot get non-group health care because of a pre-existing condition. And no, it's not just that they want to exclude that. They won't cover me at all.
I'm sure there are millions of Americans in the same boat as me. Say, everyone who's had a heart attack or diabetes, to start with.
John McCain's plan flatly does not work for us. It will leave me uninsured.
Can you guys provide any reason as to why a person's health care for themselves and their families should continue to be provided by their employer?
What makes health care insurance different from homeowners and auto insurance that doesn't come through your employer?
Chicounsel -- there's no reason an employer should continue to provide health insurance, unless they want to compete for labor with other employers who do.
Employers could provide housing & auto insurance as well. If had two job offers & one offered all three & one offered only health, I'd have to seriously consider the former.
I can't vouch for the source but insure.com says "there are no state or federal laws requiring private employers to offer health benefits to their workers."
Can you guys provide any reason as to why a person's health care for themselves and their families should continue to be provided by their employer?
Chicounsel: Why would anyone want to do something so silly? I think there's widespread agreement among healthcare policy wonks throughout the political spectrum that tying health insurance to employment is not a good idea. Unfortunately, this status quo arrangement is what most of the population depends on, and McCain's plan, were it implemented, would undermine this system without providing anything to take its place.
Employer-administered health insurance may be "bad" but it's not nearly as bad as not being covered at all.
