Your Health Care May Decide The 2008 Election

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Your Health Care May Decide The 2008 Election
By Robert Borosage

July 23rd, 2008 - 11:02am ET


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Now we're in the presidential campaign's silly season. The primaries are over; the conventions yet to come. Americans are tuning out politics and dialing in baseball and the Olympics, vacations and the price of gas.

Senator Barack Obama is traveling abroad, demonstrating that he really is a responsible driver. And Senator John McCain seems intent on running into every pothole in the road. This week, he published an op-ed in the New York Post slamming Obama for agreeing with the Iraqi Prime Minister that it is time to bring the troops home by 2010. Sure, McCain admitted, "Iraq's army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year," but it will still need a lot of help. "The Iraqi air force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover." Particularly not against the fearsome al-Qaeda Air Force. And McCain didn't even mention the need to build Iraq a blue water navy. The $3 trillion Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz estimates we've squandered on the war — about a billion a day in direct and indirect costs — aren't nearly enough.

Americans will begin to tune into the election again around the conventions. And in the fall, they'll start to take a closer look at who the candidates are and what they believe. Issues matter less in this assessment than broad measures of the candidate's character and sense about whether he has a clue.

In this assessment, I suspect that one issue, seldom mentioned now, is going to matter a great deal by November. Iraq will be big no doubt; the economy bigger. But health care may just be the pothole that cracks up McCain's Straight Talk Express.

People worry a lot about affording health care. Workers accept lower wages with employers that offer health care. They hang onto lousy jobs to keep their health care. Most labor negotiations and disputes center largely on the costs of health care. On this issue, attention is paid over kitchen tables across the country.

So this fall, Americans will discover an inconvenient truth about John McCain. He wants you to lose your employer-based health care. He thinks you aren't sufficiently conscious about the cost of your health care, and you are using too much of it. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/your-health-care-may-decide-2008-election