The McCain Health Plan: Millions Lose Coverage, Costs Worsen, and Insurance and Drug Industries Win

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



The McCain Health Plan: Millions Lose Coverage, Health Costs Worsen, and Insurance and Drug Industries Win
By Roger Hickey

April 29th, 2008 - 9:24am ET


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Today Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver what his handlers are hyping as a major address on health care. McCain’s plan is a dangerous fraud.

He wants voters to think he is going after health care cost inflation. In reality, he wants to dismantle the employer-provided system that now covers over 60 percent (or about 158 million) of non-elderly Americans, forcing millions of us who now get fairly decent health insurance on the job to instead buy whatever they can find on the individual market controlled by unregulated and predatory insurance companies. And he would drive health care costs upward, not downward.

This is truly amazing: McCain and his handlers knew they had to say something about health care. So they turned to their friends (and financial supporters) in the health care industry and the conservative think tanks. And they have adopted the most extreme right-wing ideological approach, premised on the idea that the big problem in health care is that Americans have too much insurance – in their words, we don’t have enough “skin in the game” – and that only when we have to buy health care with money that comes directly out of our own pockets will consumers force doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to become more efficient.

So that’s the theory. But it is contradicted by the facts. Most of us already pay part of our premiums out of our own pockets, and we increasingly have to shell out for co-pays in order to get to see a doctor. The result—in practice—is that most people, even those with good insurance, now think twice or three times about even getting regular preventive health checkups. Having lots of “skin in the game” has meant that millions of Americans don’t get health care they need—and that’s one of the big problems in U.S. health care driving costs up, not down.

But McCain, like George Bush, pays more attention to ultra-conservative theory than he does to the facts. So McCain wants to tax workers’ health care premiums that are paid for by employers. Ask any expert, conservative or liberal, and they will tell you the result will be companies will stop providing health care as an employee benefit. Fortune Magazine quotes one of their experts on the impact of McCain's plan: “I predict that most companies would stop paying for health care in three to four years,” says Robert Laszewski, a consultant who works with corporate benefits managers. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/mccain-health-plan-millions-lose-coverage-health-costs-worsen-and-insurance-and-drug-indu

[sakabatou]

1. Yay!

:puke:

[rdenney]

3. Yeah, McCain has his first-class insurance and to hell with the rest of us peons. n/t

[rdenney]

2. Excluding the expensive premiums, good luck in covering pre-existing conditions without a group plan

You will wait at least a year or more to get covered and your premiums, deductibles and co-pays will still be higher then a person with no such conditions.

Single-payer health-care NOW!