McCain "The problem with health care in America, it's not the quality. It is the inflation. … if we could get it under control and get it reduced so that health care costs are reasonable, then those people will be able to afford it."
Obama "The problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care; the problem is they can't afford it. "
The candidates take very different approaches to reigning in health care costs.
Senator McCain places a great deal of faith in the ability of market forces to control costs if the individuals who receive health care control health care spending. McCain Would offer families a $5,000 tax credit to help buy insurance. He says he would pay for that tax credit by eliminating the tax break that companies get for their contribution to employee coverage. he rejects the idea of mandated universal health insurance, but would create a "guaranteed access plan" to help provide coverage of last resort for "high-risk" people.
Senator McCain has a long history of votes in the US Senate including:
- Allowing patients to sue HMOs and collect punitive damages
- Increasing the Medicaid rebate for generic drugs
- Allowing the federal government to negotiate prices of prescription drugs
- Allowing the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada
- Allowing medical savings accounts
- Favoring tax credits for people without employee health insurance
- Allowing tax deductions for long-term care insurance
- Voted against means based testing for Medicare insurance premiums
Senator Obama would require all children to have health insurance. He would keep the current employer-based system while creating a new public insurance plan, and would require insurance companies to accept people who have pre-existing conditions.
Senator Obama's voting record is much shorter and can be found here.
My take
I have come to view health care much like I view education. The state provides grades K through 12 free and provides means tested assistance to some for advanced education. Individuals may choose to forego free education in favor of private and parochial schools. Some basic level of care needs to be guaranteed. We have already accepted this model for senior citizens in the passage of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. I don't feel terribly qualified to specify the mechanism for doing so.
There is something to be said for allowing individuals to make health care decisions. According to the BBC only 13% of health care costs are being paid by individuals. If I am not paying the bill there is little incentive for cost control.
The same BBC website reports that 15 to 20% of healthcare costs are administration. This provides a powerful argument for a single payer system. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis Medicare and Medicaid have administrative costs of 5% & 2%.
Sources:
Project Vote Smart
National Center for Policy Analysis
On The Issues Website
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Comments: 18
I think that companies should be REQUIRED to provide health insurance to their employees. I think that the damn insurance companies should stop profiting off of us and the hospital administrators, etc shouldn't be making millions of dollars each year while millions of Americans are uninsured. There are plenty of other countries that have free or cheap health insurance for their citizens, so why is it that America can't do the same?
For most consumer goods, you can compare prices at various stores and make an informed decision. Would you eat a restaurant with no prices on the menu? Hoping that you had enough money when the bill came? Try asking your insurer what the "usual and customary charge" is for a particular proceedure, even a simple one.
It is impossible to for consumers to shop around without a clear and transparent pricing structure.
The above response highlights a significant but rearely talked about aspect of the health insurance problem, the under insured. High deductable, high co-pay plans without a maximum out-of -pocket are what I call provider protection plans. The provider is guarenteed enough payment to cover his costs even if he doesn't profit, but the customer is left with a bill he is frequently unable to pay.
The Houston Chronicle reported recently that the biggest increase in uncollectable bills for the county hospitals was those making between $40K and $75K. Recognize that a plan with an 80/20 copay and no max out-of-pocket leaves you with a bill of $20,000 per every $100,000 of billings.
You don't have to be real sick to hit $100K.
I would have liked for Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic candidate. As much as I admire John McCain as a great patriot and senator, I would have voted for her.
If the Democrats wanted a President Obama, they should have gotten him more experience; perhaps as a VP under Hillary.
Right now he just does not have what it takes to be president. Under Obama, we will have high taxes, high prices and no helath care.
This of course, assumes that health care providers are not taking a loss on the rates that are charged to these insurance companies and HMOs, but if they are that means that someone else is subsidizing those lower rates and thereby the insurance companies and HMO. Otherwise there would be no incentive for health care providers to agree to these lower rates.
While I make no claim that this would solve all our problems with making health care affordable it would go a long way to leveling the playing field and go a long way towards revealing where the discreapancies lay and who is really paying more or less than their fair share of health care costs.
No proposal for this, by anyone, so far.
We, the taxpayers, foot the bill which runs into billions of dollars a year for these people. It's time to take care of AMERICANS first and let the illegal aliens do the best they can.
That's a lie of the worst and most ignorant sort. Surely you don't expect anybody to believe you. do you?
"It's time to take care of AMERICANS first and let the illegal aliens do the best they can."
If you witnessed a car accident and people were severely injured, would you refuse to help them if they couldn't prove they were US citizens? Would you stand there singing God Bless America while you watched them all die?
Nice job!
Good article though I think we are very different on whether we HAVE to have a basic government floor on some care. Anyone who has ever worked for or studied government, has far fewer illusions about the effectiveness/efficiency of any system they run.
There are links to McCain's web site as well as to his voting record.
People should be concerned as well as scared that both McCain and Obama are making this a central issue in their campaigns.
So do I need to list the issues that both candidates should be concerned with?